My macbook will not open after an update?

Question

Macbook will not start up. I get the message starting up Mac OS X but will not open. Tried disk utility , single user mode, but no luck.I cannot open it in safe mode , is there a way to make it work again without loosing my files, photos,etc?

Answer 1

Try putting in your system disk and booting to that (either hold option to get the bios-type thing and click on the disk when it comes up or hold 'c' when you start the machine) - running off the system disk is slow, since it has to read from the CD/DVD drive for everything, but you should be able to pull up Disk Utility.  Do a Repair Disk and then Repair Permissions.  If that doesn't fix it, go out and get yourself the latest version of DiskWarrior and run everything it can do.

If those things don't work, you're hosed and chances are you'll either have to take it in to the genius bar, where they'll probably tell you that you hafta wipe the drive and start over (or you can just wipe the drive and start over yourself for free)