Mac OS X 10.5.6 installation problems surface

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 17 December 2008 02:22

Opinion and Analysis

I've also heard of cases where Software Update itself freezes while downloading the delta updater, or the download appears to finish normally but is (according to the users concerned) incomplete.

The former situation is difficult to explain, but one theory concerning the latter is that in certain (as yet unspecified) circumstances the Software Update mechanism incorrectly identified the set of changes required by the target system and consequently downloaded an incomplete package.

As is so often the case, a good proportion of users that experience problems when using Software Update to install 10.5.6 report that downloading and applying either the normal or combo updater sets things straight. It may be necessary to boot into 'safe mode' to achieve this if the regular startup process fails.

If you subscribe to the theory that you're more likely to hear from someone with a problem than a user for whom everything went swimmingly, there seems little reason to delay the installation of the update.

But I'll be taking the usual precautions, including restarting the computer immediately before applying the update.

And I'll play it safe and use the downloaded updater rather than Software Update. (If you're looking after more than one computer that makes more sense than using Software Update anyway.

Some people recommend cloning your startup disk or making some other form of full backup before updating the operating system. If you've got enough spare disk capacity, that's easy insurance.

But don't go out any buy a hard drive just for that purpose unless it's essential that you can get back up and running in the shortest possible time.

My practice is to do nothing more than my normal data backup, and i've never had a serious problem (touch wood) with a system update except for the one that included a bad graphics driver for the Mac model I was using at the time.