Can't Get Out of Leopard SetUp Assistant???

[Mac-A-Matic]

My brother seems to be having problems with his MacBook 13" running Leopard.

He was installing an update to the OS when it froze and gave him the spinning beach ball of death, so after a while, he did a hard restart.

After restarting, the machine brought up the Setup Assistant and whether he fills it in or cancels or quits, the machine returns to the beginning of Setup Assistant.

I had him reboot using the Leopard install disk and run Disk Utility, checking that the HD was repaired and permissions verified, but the same problem persists.

Since I'm on the East Coast and he's on the West, I don't have much else to go on and was hoping someone here might have a solution.

Thanks!

[richorlin]

It's a known problem and Apple has posted a work-around:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306998


If the Setup Assistant appears unexpectedly each time Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard starts up, and continues to appear even after completing all pages in the assistant, use these steps

Start up with a Safe Boot.
When the login window appears, do not attempt to log in. Instead, click the Restart button located at the bottom of the login window and let the computer restart normally. (If the Restart button is not displayed, click the Back button, then click the Restart button.)

[Jimmypoo]

Nuke/Pave. He doesn't have anything on the drive, does he? Is this a new unit??

If he can grab an old User folder for data (via Target Mode boot), if this is an OS Upgrade, great - otherwise write zeros and tomorrow give it 37 minutes to install.

[richorlin]

[quote Jimmypoo]Nuke/Pave. He doesn't have anything on the drive, does he? Is this a new unit??

If he can grab an old User folder for data (via Target Mode boot), if this is an OS Upgrade, great - otherwise write zeros and tomorrow give it 37 minutes to install.
Why would you tell him to nuke and pave. He didn't say it was a new install. I had the same problem, followed Apple's instructions and everything went back to normal. Why would you turn a three minute fix into a several hour job?

[Mac-A-Matic]

Thanks for the info - he's got it running again.

[john-o]

In Jimmypoo's defense, some folk have had this issue and been unable to get Apple's fix to work. They've had to resort to the "nuke/pave" solution:

http://db.tidbits.com/article/9436

Definitely sounds like a fairly widespread Leopard bug. Glad your brother got it figured out!