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Bertrude

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 2, 2010
102
14
England
Hi. I have a 2011 27" iMac (3.4GHz i7, 16 GB RAM) with 10.6.8 installed on the internal drive and 10.13.6 installed on an external SSD via the Thunderbolt 1 port.

I recently tried to install the most recent security update 2019-006 via the App Store but it couldn't finish the installation process and hung the machine at the first "restarting" phase - grey screen with Apple logo and a progress bar hardly filled. It had been left for hours before I finally gave up and force shut down the Mac.

I can start the Mac up again, but trying to either shut down or restart it results in it hanging on a black screen with the only the cursor visible (and moveable).

I tried installing the security update again from the Apple website support download and it failed again at the same point. Booting in Safe Mode and trying this again has (I think) allowed the update to install fully as it managed to restart and apply the update more completely this time. I've reset the SMC, done numerous PRAM/VRAM resets and I'm still left with a machine that sadly won't restart or shut down properly.

I've tried using the terminal (although I don't really know what I'm doing) to sudo reboot or sudo shutdown but get messages reporting that either process "is busy updating; waiting for lock". Killing the "kextd" process in Activity Monitor then allows the reboot to happen but I have the same problem again once the machine is restarted.

Anyone have any ideas how I might be able to fix this? I'm loathe to wipe the drive and start again but will do if necessary but was hoping there may be a less scorched earth approach or a way to narrow down what may be causing this. My thanks in advance.

EDIT: I think I may have solved it.

I've run EtreCheck and had a look at recent software installs amongst which was a beta version of Steam I was trying out to see how the remote play function worked. I've deleted it along with it's associated files in the Application Support folder (except the games themselves) but that didn't work. EtreCheck also showed the following Kernel Extensions related to it:

/Library/Extensions
[Loaded] AmbrosiaAudioSupport.kext (Ambrosia Software, Inc., 4.1.4 - SDK 10.11)
[Loaded] SteamInput.kext (Valve Corporation, 4357.73.42 - SDK 10.13)
[Not Loaded] SteamInput-DS4v1.kext (Valve Corporation, 4357.73.42 - SDK 10.9


Deleting these have allowed my Mac to restart normally! I'm going to try reinstalling the non-beta version again and hope it doesn't bork anything up.
 
Last edited:

stegibson

macrumors newbie
Nov 8, 2019
1
0
I've got the exact same problem. Don't think I've installed any new software though, till download etrecheck and have a go
 

Bertrude

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 2, 2010
102
14
England
Sorry to hear that. Did you manage to solve your problem?
Maybe it's one of the Kernel Extensions in your case too (or perhaps an unsigned file)? EtreCheck seems to do a nice job of letting you know what these are.
 
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