After an update of a 2006 iMac4,1 running 10.6.x first showed ‘bad kext file
installation, redo’ then turned off and will NOT reboot, even in recovery. Just spinning wagon wheel. Any help appreciated.
Earlier Mac models
That is a white iMac. There could be multiple hardware issues that could be the source of the problem.
The first & most likely is a failed hard drive.
Try booting from your OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD. If this boots fine, then you can try running Disk Utility First Aid on the internal drive to try & repair any file system issues. Unless Disk Utility is showing a "SMART status failed" message, it won't tell you anything about the health of the hard drive....just the health of the file system.
You can also try booting into Safe Mode.
If I can find a DVD or make a startup thumb drive I’ll try that, but there is no key combo that will open it in any mode, safe, restore, you name it. I’m thinking of pulling the hard drive out and sending it to restore company. not sure I trust most of the restoration software out there. I just need the accounting backups restored so the client can continue his ongoing billing. It is significant.
Thank you for your help with this.
If this is an Intel iMac, then I would try creating a bootable Knoppix USB stick in order to check the health of the hard drive. If the hard drive is failing, then it is best to have a professional data recovery service retrieve the files since you usually only get one chance at recovering files from a failing hard drive. Plus macOS and most consumer data recovery utilities are unable to handle the I/O errors produced by a failing hard drive.
I would try using Knoppix v7.x or v.8.6.1 although even v9.x should work. You can use the downloaded Knoppix .iso file as a source for Etcher (Mac, Windows, Linux) to make a bootable Knoppix USB stick. You will need to Option Boot and select the orange icon labeled "EFI" in order to boot Knoppix. The system may appear to be frozen on the Apple boot picker menu while booting Knoppix, so make sure to give Knoppix lots of time to finish booting.
Once booted to the Knoppix desktop, click the "Start" menu icon on the lower left of the Taskbar and navigate to "System --> GSmartControl" (It may be "System Tools --> GSmartControl"). Within the GSmartControl app you need to double-click on the icon for the internal hard drive to access the health information. You will need to click the "View Output" to get the complete report to post here on the forum so I can review it.
iMac unbootable after failed software update, bad kext fil
