MacBook Air frozen on startup loading screen?
Hi, recently I was downloading something which may have been on a dodgy website, when a few mins later my MacBook Air froze. I had to force shut down by holding the power button, but now when trying to reboot, the black loading screen with the apple logo only loads to around 1/3 of the way before freezing, at the exact same spot every time. I have tried safe mode but that also freezes then crashes when near the end of the loading bar. Also I have tried recovery mode to run first aid. I am worried as I have a lot of work on here and I believe time machine wasn’t turned on as I can’t restore to an earlier date. I don’t want to restore completely as I will lose all my work. Does anyone have any help?
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Boot into Single User Mode (COMMAND-S at startup). When you get to the prompt, type "fsck -fy" (without the quotes) and press RETURN. If you get a message saying that the file system was modified, do "fsck -fy" again until that message goes away. Then type "reboot" (without the quotes) and press RETURN. Hold down COMMAND-V for Verbose Mode and, if the computer freezes again, take note of the last line you see on the screen before the freeze happens.
by Steve
Tried all this and it won’t let me open in verbose mode the loading bar doesn’t even start going up! Also won’t let me start in safe mode it freezes right near the end of the bar
by Charlie
The odds are very good that your data is still on there. What you're describing sounds like OS corruption, not a hardware failure. Fixing the problem would require reinstalling the OS but, yeah, that'll wipe your data. Since you don't have a backup you need to improvise.
If you have another Mac and the appropriate cable, you can put your MacBook into Target Disk Mode and use the second Mac to back up your MacBook's drive as a disk image, so you'll have a copy of everything.
Otherwise, you'll need an appropriately sized external drive for the MacBook, then back up your MacBook via Single User Mode. Once it's fully backed up (and you've verified that it's backed up) you can then wipe and reinstall.
https://jesperh.se/osx-backup-from-singl...
by Steve
Okay thanks for the reassurance and advice! I will try this!
by Charlie