News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

October 29, 2007

troubleshooting

Remember kids: don’t APE and upgrade

Posted Oct. 29, ’07, 12:16 PM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Troubleshooting

UnsanityWe mentioned it obliquely in the latest podcast and its attendant show notes, but some users have been having installation issues with Leopard; namely, the installer hanging at a blank blue screen, prompting some to refer to Windows’s infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). The problems seem to stem from a conflict between doing an upgrade installation (as opposed to a clean install or archive and install) and an older version of Unsanity’s Application Enhancer, aka APE.

Over on Unsanity’s blog, Slava Karpenko wrote a post that explains the issue:

I’d like to note that the problems some people were experiencing while doing the Mac OS X upgrade and being unable to boot due to Application Enhancer installed may have been caused by the “old” versions of Application Enhancer not properly recognizing the system version. The latest 2.0.3, released on 13 March, is properly detecting the upgrade and refuses to load so you should not have any issues with installing Leopard over it. For this reason, we recommend you upgrading to 2.0.3 before upgrading your Mac OS X. It will properly detect the system version and deactivate itself.
Karpenko claims the problem was the fact that Apple didn’t give them a version of the final release version of Leopard to test. That’s certainly problematic, but at the same time I wonder how thorough they would have been about testing an outdated version of their software.

Apple, meanwhile, has posted a knowledge base document that walks you through the steps of removing APE from your system so you can perform an upgrade. It’s pretty straightforward, though it does require a little comfort with Terminal. Otherwise, it’s recommended you do an erase and install—don’t forget to back up.


1 Comments

fletcher Author Profile Page said:

Don't APE at all. This is yet another example of why this kind of software is a really bad idea.

October 29, 2007 12:49 PM

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