Prep for upgrade to Maverick

Hi

I posted recently because an upgrade to Maverick had gone spectacularly wrong and you guys showed me how to restore my machine from a time machine backup.

thanks of that.

I would like to try again but could do with a few pointers as to how to do it successfully this time.

My first problem -
After the installer had finished I was left with a screen occupied by my wallpaper and no apps or menus available. If I used the F4 key I could see lots of open apps and my main toolbar across the top of the screen, but if I clicked on any of them they just when away again.

To get past that I had to physically power down the machine. Interestingly the prompt to reboot instead didn't work because the installer was stopping the reboot.

Second problem -
When the machine came back up it gave me two choices -

1. Delete my user account and create another
2. Delete my account and restore from a time machine backup

Neither seemed very attractive propositions as I just wanted to upgrade the OS without losing any settings.

I think my dithering and going back and forth over these options is probably what cause the install to fail completely in the end.

Does anyone know of a guide online I can use to upgrade my OS to maverick without changing my user account or any settings etc I have?

Thanks

Brad

PS I have read the stickies and noted the advice about updating my apps and taking a backup.
PPS I am running OSX 10.8.5

Have no idea what you did/didn't do; what else you may have been doing on the machine at the same time...

Neither, the problems you have listed, nor either of those options are standard of an upgrade installation of Mavericks. Trying to solve those problems - which are already resolved with a fresh installation of 10.8, is frankly, a waste of time.

My first question would be - what Mac do you have - either include the make and model # (as in: MacBook Pro 5,2; iMac 9,1; etc) or the make and CPU (as in: MacBook Core 2 Duo 2.1 Ghz) that is in it at a minimum.

Have you tried booting into Recovery mode? Perhaps you will have to format the drive, download again using Internet Recovery as set out in this article:-

OS X: About OS X Recovery

thanks

Thanks Bob and Harry.

I've been offline for a few days so haven't been able to respond.

Pulling up the full spec for the mac -

Model Name: Mac mini
Model Identifier: Macmini6,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.3 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 16 GB
Boot ROM Version: MM61.0106.B03
SMC Version (system): 2.8f0

Guess I should add that to my signature.

------

So it is not normal for the upgrade to prompt me to change my account details?

I wonder if that was because I had to power off the machine to get past the blank desktop?

Maybe I should forcefully quit every open app before trying again. I am still not used to the way the MAC keeps things open after I click on the close button. I'll google how to forcibly shut each app down and try again next weekend.

I need to use the MAC right now.

Thanks for the feedback guys

Brad

Where are you installing Mavericks from ?

Cheers ... McBie

Installer Location

Hi McBie

I'm installing it from the app store; that is where the reminder to upgrade takes me.

Brad

The close button closes nothing other than the window ~ use the Quit menu in the Menu Bar to Quit the program.