Last last night, I ended up updating my MacBook (s aapl) to Mac OS X 10.5.7, the latest version of the software. It’s caused two problems: The first is that it’s killed the audio output on the computer; in the preferences pane, the only option I have is “digital output.” The second problem has been an overall degradation in performance — think Shaq O’Neal moving around a basketball court with an injured knee.
I ended up tweeting about my audio predicament, and was immediately offered ways on how to fix the problems. Sadly, none of them helped with the audio but they did help restore the system performance. However, since then a lot of people have described a whole myriad of problems associated with this OS upgrade — some have mentioned display problems, others are complaining of slow speeds and many are like me: their computers are without sound. Apple’s support discussion forums are chock full of complaints (though on the flip side, the OS X 10.5.7 does boost the battery life of netbooks.)
If you are a Mac owner, I would say don’t upgrade to the latest OS version…at least not ’til the problems are solved. I am off to the Genius Bar to see if they can fix the sound.
I do a lot of OS X kernel-level development.
There’s an extremely good chance there’s something wrong with your AppleHDA.kext package, located in /System/Library/Extensions/
Try replacing this file from another OS 10.5.7 system. Then do a disk permissions repair (very important), followed by executing the following command from the terminal:
sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions
Reboot and things should improve.
Drew
Thanks for the hack. I am in transit right now — I will be online soon and try and get this done soon.
Before you do any OS hack, you should try to simply reset the hardware, the SMC on intel Macs or PMU on PPCs. This is a known fix if you’re having power or hardware issues.
Have not had problems with the sound or overall performance, but I lost the footer in a Word document and Entourage has been flaky since updating. Not sure if these are caused by 10.5.7, but the timing is suspicious.
Am very late to read this post? Or you late in writing it?
Already upgraded, but lucky that nothing bad went on my side.. Sound output is good as normal.
Chetan
Lucky you 🙂 Ditto to Mike Osterman. Glad to hear that you didn’t have any problems.
A friend had the same issue, and this is what finally worked for her:
1) First you must uninstall all traces of “Flash,” “Macromedia,” and “Shockwave” in the system library and each user’s library. Look in the folders below.
System library:
/Library/Application Support
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins
Each user’s library:
home of user/Library/Application Support
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins
/Library/Preferences
2) Then you must go to System Preferences/Accounts and temporarily give every user administrative privileges; i.e., check the “Allow user to administer this computer” box.
3) Then you must log on as each user and install Flash Player 9 using Adobe’s “Install Flash Player 9 OSX” application.
4) Then you can go back to System Preferences/Accounts and remove administrative privilege from users that shouldn’t have it.
That’s it. It seems that Adobe’s installer doesn’t work correctly if the user doesn’t have administrative privilege. The result is that users are unable to raise the volume setting above silent.
The slow speeds are probably due to spotlight rebuilding/updating its indexes, which is what my machine appeared to do.
I don’t see the word “Combo” anywhere in your post or the comments so far. The very first thing to do if an update causes problems is to go download the combo updater and reupdate over the top of your current system.
Combo updaters contain entire apps, not just snippets of them. So if Mail got some patches, you get a whole new Mail app in the combo updater and not just the couple of internal files that got changed. Frequently, applying a combo updater can have a positive effect on systems with post-update issues…
Might be worth a shot?
Heavyboots,
Thanks for that tip. Totally appreciate it.
Best
I second that. I downloaded the combo update and updated my Dual-125GHz G4 and Mail is actually a bit snappier than before. Haven’t had any audio issues either.
Wow, I’m so glad everything went OK on my machines – I hadn’t heard about this before I updated them. That said, Spotlight DID start a new indexing run after the reboot…
Repeatedly drops WiFi signal, losing DHCP address, when going to sleep, then freezes. Hopefully they’ll put out fixes for these problems.
I have problems with my mbp losing it’s dhcp managed ip-address (both wired and wireless) … i upgraded my Linksys wrt54g2 router (since i thought that was somehow suddenly causing the problem, as a printer seemed to have an ip problem as well), reconfigured the router, but i keep having the problem, while another Mac on the LAN seems to connect without problems. That’s when i thought it might be related to me recentrly upgrading my macbook pro … Reading this post, i’ll try the combo-updater in a moment, but wonder whether that will help…
Please let us know if you have got it to work yet.
If I keep advanced options open on System Preferences>>Network>>TCP/IP the IP address gets assigned then promptly disappear.
The problems only went away after upgrading to snow leopard.
had a bizarre issue with the display on my mbp whilst i was working on the system- the screen brightness on the laptop kept going to zero but did not affect my external monitor. removed the dvi connection and still the same issue, rebooted without the dvi and manually adjusted the screen brightness and it still was resetting to zero. did this again and finally it seemed to work back to where it was before the update..
And this is why I am waiting a while before updating the OS on my Mac Pro. Many people have updated with no problems, but in a week or so, we should know whether the problems being experienced by a few people are due to the installation of OS X 10.5.7 or due to the other apps on their systems.
I will say that after updating my Macbook Pro’s went for 3hrs long on a single charge.
I must battery life improved.
Ahh thanks for the post! I was seriously considering if i should upgrade it but this is exactly what I’m afraid of. Guess I’ll wait out abit for them to solve all the problems and upgrade it only when its more bug free 🙂
I have a shiny new brick thanks to 10.5.7. It may not have a startup chime, but it does come with a very loud fan.
What kind of system did you install the update on? Did you just do a Software Update or download the combo update?
I also ran the system maintenance scripts before and after the update.
Try booting from the OS CD and run disk-utilities to see if it fixes the problem.
To whitehallplc
After I updated to 10.5.7 my power brick seemed not to work. Battery ran down and now Macbook is completely dead. I’ve already called for a new one to be sent, I just hope that’s the problem.
Is this what happened with you?
Here’s the report from my tech guy:
Can’t get the machine to start from anything.
1) Remove HD and connect to my workstation and it mounts fine. HD is probably good.
2) Try to Boot machine from Firmware Restoration 1.3 as per instructions with Restoration CD. No start, no video.
3) Disconnect optical drive and remove RAM, no better.
4) Reset SMC and attempt to reset PRAM. No success.
Appears logic board has died. Order replacement logic board.
why dont you give ubuntu 9.04 a try ……………you may end up liking it 😉
I have completely lost my screen (I use mac mini at home with LCD TV as a media centre) and have no way to access the screen to try to fix it. Even starting in safe mode won’t allow me to get the screen back.
I can’t believe so many very different bugs were included in this release. there goes my weekend.
My iMac and MacBook both rolled through the update without a hitch. I have next to little 3rd Party software onboard.
And I have the habit of NOT letting Software Update do the job – I download the change directly from the Apple site.
Hi,
updating went fine on iMac Alu 20″, iMac Alu 24″, MacBook Intel (White), MacBook unibody (2 of these actually), MacBook Pro 15″.
Except the iMac Alu 20″ all were installed with Software Update, I updated the 20″ with the Combo updater as downloading that went faster, not because of problems.
For those of you managing Macs via OS X server, DO NOT UPDATE!
This update (yes, even the combo) breaks client management completely. Even to the point of not allowing users to log in. There’s a work-around, but it’s ghetto.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9500862#9500862
Ugh, it found a sure way to piss me off. I updated last night, and my localhost went down after I rebooted. I can’t figure out what’s wrong. I’ve rebooted my computer and restarted the webserver, all to no avail. I’ve pinged both “localhost” and “127.0.0.1” and found no dropped packets. However, I cannot access either localhost or 127.0.0.1 from my browser.
I’m using an iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X 10.5.7 and Firefox 3.0.10. I actually just reinstalled Safari to test it there, and it doesn’t work with Safari either.
If anyone has any ideas, please email me at renee (dot) c (dot) nguyen (at) gmail (dot) com.
Looks like the update changed httpd to 64 bit?
After digging around some, finally I ran this command: sudo arch -i386 -ppc /usr/sbin/httpd
It’s working now.
Only issues for G4 PPC 1.5, LOST SOUND OUTPUT ability; it only plays on internal speakers, and one USB will not recognize mouse, while the other does! The SOUND thing blows since I have it run over my home’s embedded speakers and lost that joy… Patch me up!
Has anyone been left with the apple screen, no spinning wheel, just the apple icon in the centre of the screen after upgrading?
Have no idea what to do now!
After I updated, my battery went dead as well. I can’t believe I have to wait again. Off to the apple store.