Software Update Question

[brontosaurus]

Good Morning All,

Recently, I fired up my Powerbook and ran Software Update. I hadn't used it for a while, so there were several items available, and I decided to install them all. After rebooting, the system experienced a kernel panic, and kept telling me I needed to restart. I was able to boot into safe mode, but was unable to find out from the logs what was causing the problem (which is probably due to my lack of expertise). I did a disk check, verified and repaired, but still no good. In the end, I did an Archive reinstall from the original CD and everything is fine. Now I'd like to try installing items from Software Update one at a time, until I find out what caused the problem. That said, assuming I come across the issue again, is there any way to uninstall/undo a software update? By the way, this is Panther, 10.3.7.

Thanks

 

[jmgalvin]

As far as I know there is no way to undo the update.

One thing I've found is that, if you install software - like apps, etc - you MIGHT have a proglem with some OS updates. While I've never experienced your problem, I have had app's refuse to launch after an update. Had to reinstall them. The worst occurredd going from 10.3.7 to .8. .9 was no problem.

Choose the updates carefully. A lot are unnecessry unless you use a program. For insatnce iTunes, iChat, etc are of no interest to me.

Make sure that you have no apps running when you do the install of the update. When an app is running the system is using at least its prefs and sometimes fonts.

If the problem repeatrs, check the Apple support site to see if there are any firmware updates for your machine.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[brontosaurus]

OK, thanks for the insight and quick response. I'll be careful.

 

[jimoblak]

At least one of the 10.3.x releases had a bug where external devices went buggy.

See that you have no extra firewire or USB devices other than the keyboard and mouse connected when running the updates. Do not reconnect these until the system has shut down and restarted.

There should be no reason to selectively choose updates. Just go for them all with nothing connected to the Mac. See you at 10.3.9

 

[ObviousTroll]

Probably too late - but I would NOT install the updates one at a time; instead I would download a "combo updater" from Apple directly and install that.

The Combo updaters are, as the name implies, bundles designed to update an entire system to the newest release. The idea is that rather than install every overlapping update from 10.3.7 to 10.3.9, you get one complete patch that jumps right to the final result, with less risk of things going screwy partway through the process.

 

[brontosaurus]

Thanks for the tip. I'll check that out.