Boot problem

Hi there!

I have search the forums for a similar question but couldn't find anything relevant. I hope I am posting this question in the correct forum.

I installed drivers for a Huawei 3G dongle on my MacBook Air, El Capitan 10.11.5. I then restarted my computer (WITH the dongle still in the USB port)...
Now it won't boot:

When I press the start button, it plays the start-up sound, the Apple logo appears and the start-up bar starts running. It runs fairly quick (as usual) for the first 50% but after that the progress is very slow. It continues like that until the bar is 100% complete and then it (and the Apple logo) just stays there, for hours on end.

I have already tried the following, but to no avail:

1) Shut down and re-start multiple times
2) Tried booting in Safe Mode ---- Mac won't boot in Safe mode.
3) Booted into Recovery, ran first Aid .... no problems found.
4) Booted into Single user mode, ran fsck -fy ..... got the "OK" message.
5) Reset NVRAM and SMC
6) Tried booting into Verbose mode. (Hours later, the slew of code just kept on rolling and rolling past)
7) Booted into Recovery and re-installed El Capitan
>> Unfortunately my Time Machine is not active :-(

Ugh ... nothing worked and I'm still stuck on the boot screen.

Can this problem be due to the new 3rd party drivers I installed or the fact that I booted the mac with the dongle in the USB port?

Please, can anyone offer me some advice?

Thanks in advance!

Jacob

Welcome to our forums.

It's very likely the drivers you installed from Huawei have caused a problem. You need to reinstall OS X clean, not just reinstall El Capitan since that doesn't get rid of the drivers. In other words, boot to recovery, erase the hard drive, and then do an internet recovery install of OS X. And remove the dongle!

How to do an Internet Recovery of your Mac

chscag said:

Welcome to our forums.

It's very likely the drivers you installed from Huawei have caused a problem. You need to reinstall OS X clean, not just reinstall El Capitan since that doesn't get rid of the drivers. In other words, boot to recovery, erase the hard drive, and then do an internet recovery install of OS X. And remove the dongle!

How to do an Internet Recovery of your Mac

Click to expand...

Hi, thanks for your reply!

I was worried it might come down to a clean install :-(

Before I do that though, is there a way to access my files, like with "cmd +t" and a second mac? Is it worth trying? (Most of my stuff is in a Dropbox folder but there are some local files I would like to recover if possible)

Thanks for the link you supplied!

Jacob

Dongles just don't work in my experience. You did not list your Mac so cannot advise on Airport Card.

harryb2448 said:

Dongles just don't work in my experience. You did not list your Mac so cannot advise on Airport Card.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice! From my very limited experience with macs I can say they same. I've tried many dongles. Most of them didn't work, and the one that did work caused more problems than it did good.

I have wifi at home but I also need internet access when I'm away from home. So I'm thinking of getting a small Huawei mobile wifi device.

When you said I had not listed my Mac, did you mean the specs? And the Airport card, that's a wifi card right?

If you want to get your files off your mac, yes, you can use Target Disk Mode. You will need a firewire/thunderbolt cable to connect the two macs. When successful, your mac will basically be an external disc you can copy files from.

ferrarr said:

If you want to get your files off your mac, yes, you can use Target Disk Mode. You will need a firewire/thunderbolt cable to connect the two macs. When successful, your mac will basically be an external disc you can copy files from.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I managed to do just that.