I have an ibook running osx panther
I recently did a general apple software update, and when i restarted my computer it went into the welcome to darwin now login screen
Ive ran a few things such as disk utilities and fsk - everything seems fine
It looks like it is about to go into osx but when it gets to login window starting, it pauses then drops out into the darwin screen
I havent tried re-installing osx as i dont want to lose all my files
Any help would be greatly appreciated

you can try typing exit from single user mode

or, alternately, try typing reboot

reset pram and nvram:

1. Shut down the computer.
2. Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
3. Turn on the computer.
4. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
5. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
6. Release the keys.

sorry, just to clarify, type exit
not "exit from single user mode".

Hi, thanks for swift reply.
I've tried everything you've said but i keep ending up at the Darwin login screen.
Any other suggestions?

hmmm... when this happens, it's usually a file system corruption. but you say you've tried fsck (typing /sbin/fsck -y ) and it reports no problems? that then usually means the single user mode flag was incorrectly set to start you up in single user mode, which resetting the nvram should fix. it didn't, so it again points to a problem with your filesystem.

as a last resort, if you can borrow another mac, you can start it up in target disk mode and back up your home directory to it through the command line so you can at least save all your files.

or a usb key drive would work, too.

Do you have Adobe CS2 installed? I know that the latest security update from apple conflicts with version cue. If this is your problem boot up in safe mode and remove version cue from your startup items folder.

JamieD