Yesterday I decided to apply the 10.5.2 update via Software Update. It downloaded and installed just fine, then proceeded to reboot my machine so I walked away to do something else. When I came back about about 10 minutes later, I was greeted by a blue screen with a black cursor. So I thought i’d wait some more. 30 minutes later and still nothing more than the same blue screen. Ok no problem, this happened to me on the Tiger to Leopard upgrade I thought, i’ll just reboot and be on my merry way. It worked for the upgrade, surely it would work now. So I reboot. Apple logo, grey screen, spinning circle. It kept doing that. Something’s wrong. Ok i’ll boot into Safe mode. Same thing. Upon booting into Verbose mode, there was some error about mDNSresponder which kept looping and looping.
Crap!
I knew my data was probably intact, but something had messed up the boot process during the upgrade.
It took the Leopard DVD and an Archive and Install to recover the system, but it recovered well with no loss of data and all my user information and applications intact.
So while the upgrade didn’t go smoothly, I got there in the end. If this happens to you, it’s not the end of the world. Just reinstall.

Often i’ve wondered if there was a better way to keep track of serial numbers for the software i’ve purchased. This usually involves keeping a text file up to date with your serials, but an upcoming trend is for software vendors to distribute license files which makes the traditional method of tracking licenses difficult.

LicenseKeeper is set to change all that by becoming the central repository of all the licenses you own.

Enough is enough. I’ve delayed upgrading this modest 80 gig hard drive that came with the Macbook for far too long. It’s time for an upgrade! So down I go to the local dodgey computer store, you know the one that looks more like a warehouse than a shop. I picked up a 160 gig drive for $125. Bargain! 5400rpm, 8Mb cache, NCQ. Certainly not the fastest but well worth the price.

Now i’ve been doing Time Machine backups since November last year, so when I got home, I fired up the computer one last time and performed a backup. After it was done, I proceeded shut down the system and removed the battery then the hard drive. Goodbye ol faithful. In went the new drive and back went the battery.

Upon firing up the machine with the external hard drive connected, I stuck in the Leopard install DVD and went through the menus to partition the drive, and then perform a system restore from backup. It asked for the source and then the destination. It then proceeded to restore my files. Everything looked good so far so I walked away and timed the process.

It took about an hour to complete and once finished, asked me to restart the system which I did.

When the system booted back up, you could imagine my astonishment to find everything exactly the way I had left it before the hard drive swap! Everything! From the placement of the icons on my desktop, to the applications I had installed. With the exception that I now had much more space 🙂

This has got to be one of the most painless hard drive upgrades I have ever done. Nice one Apple for making this such a painless process!