Software update fiasco

I went through a routine weekly update and system displayed Apple progress bar page. Then message said system would reboot after a few minutes. The screen went white and nothing happened for over an hour. Tried rebooting and got Apple progress bar page, which proceeds for about a fourth of the progress bar then screen turns white and nothing happens for hours. Have tried this 3 times and same thing happens. I recently got a new mother board, maybe 2 months ago. Anyone know what might be happening and how to fix?

It sounds like there might be some hard drive issues. It would help to know your Mac's specs and OS version to be more specific but here a few suggestions:

1. If you are on OS X 10.7 or higher try rebooting/powering up and pressing command R immediately. If you are see a recovery partition choose that option. Run disk utility and let it repair any disk errors that it finds.

2. If you cannot see a recovery partition try pressing command S simultaneously upon bootup. When the text stops scrolling by type fsck -fy and hit enter. If errors are found repeat the command until no errors are found.

Thank you for your reply. I couldn't get a recovery window, but was successful with your second suggestion. I received the message, "the volume OS X base system appears to be OK." But, still had same reaction as stated above when trying to reboot normally.

I don't remember what the exact software version I had was, but it should have been the latest version before the very last one. I don't remember the details of the computer itself, MacBook Pro, about 4 years old.

Any other suggestions?

You don't tell us the display size of your MacBook Pro. If a 15 or 17" 2011 MBP your description matches one of the symptoms of the GPU failure, the replacement covered by a quality program. The fact that you had a logic board replacement only a few months ago is immaterial, I've seen some fail again.

I just tried your first suggestion again to see if it might work and it did. I was only able to select the OS system, verify disk option. It gave me the same message as your suggestion 2.

I also noticed at the bottom of the dialog box that it listed the following:

Capacity: 1.33 GB
Available: 31.3 MB
Used: 1.3 GB

Could this be the problem? Could I have been hacked or gotten a virus that multiplied to fill up my disk so when I tried to update there wasn't enough room? Or some virus was activated upon updating? A couple of months ago my credit card number was stolen and I still don't know how, that's why I ask the above questions.

Capacity: 1.33 GB
Available: 31.3 MB
Used: 1.3 GB

Could this be the problem? Could I have been hacked or gotten a virus that multiplied to fill up my disk so when I tried to update there wasn't enough room? Or some virus was activated upon updating? A couple of months ago my credit card number was stolen and I still don't know how, that's why I ask the above questions.

Click to expand...

The capacity you're seeing is that of the Recovery partition and has nothing at all to do with what space remains on your main hard drive. And there are no viruses in the wild that can affect OS X. Someone stealing your credit card number is not going to impact on anything that's going on with your Mac. Besides, I'm sure you have already cancelled that card and have received a replacement from your credit card provider.

I have a 15" display. So, do I essentially have to replace the hard disk? Is there any other diagnostic I can do to be sure?

???? All that was said is you are viewing your Restore partition not that you need to replace your hard drive unless there is something I missed above!