SOLVED I installed a USB audio I/O driver and now it wont boot

[Nora1234]

Hi,

I have an old Mbox USB Audio device and I installed the driver in my MacBook but now it won’t boot up. It gets stuck on the Apple logo and progress bar.

I tried booting in safe mode by holding shift but that doesn’t work either.

Is there a way to boot the machine (like by using a USB stick) so I can uninstall/remove the audio device driver?

 

[Nora1234]

My MacBook Pro is model A1502

 

[deliriouscat]

Sorry for the late reply. It sounds like the driver installation may have conflicted with your system.

To resolve this, you can boot your MacBook Pro into Recovery Mode and then use Terminal to remove the problematic driver. Here are the steps:

1. Power off your MacBook.
2. Hold down Command+R and press the power button. Keep holding Command+R until you see the Apple logo.
3. Once you see the macOS Utilities screen, go to Utilities in the menu bar and select Terminal.
4. In Terminal, you'll need to navigate to the directory where your driver is located (usually /Library/Extensions or /System/Library/Extensions).
5. Once you're in the correct directory, you can use the 'rm' command to remove the driver. Be very careful with this command as it can delete any file. If you're unsure about the driver's name, please let us know!

After removing the driver, restart your MacBook and see if it boots up correctly.

 

[Nora1234]

Sorry for the late reply. It sounds like the driver installation may have conflicted with your system.

To resolve this, you can boot your MacBook Pro into Recovery Mode and then use Terminal to remove the problematic driver. Here are the steps:

1. Power off your MacBook.
2. Hold down Command+R and press the power button. Keep holding Command+R until you see the Apple logo.
3. Once you see the macOS Utilities screen, go to Utilities in the menu bar and select Terminal.
4. In Terminal, you'll need to navigate to the directory where your driver is located (usually /Library/Extensions or /System/Library/Extensions).
5. Once you're in the correct directory, you can use the 'rm' command to remove the driver. Be very careful with this command as it can delete any file. If you're unsure about the driver's name, please let us know!

After removing the driver, restart your MacBook and see if it boots up correctly.

Hi Deliriouscat,

Thanks so much for your reply.

I was able to get into utilities. It’s been a long time since I used Terminal and have to freshen up on the Unix commands.

I’ll report back if you’re still around once I get a chance to figure it out. Thanks again

 

[Nora1234]

Ok so I figured out the pwd and ls commands. Now I have to figure out the directory structure of my hard drive to get to the extensions folder.

 

[deliriouscat]

To find the path, you can try using the 'kextfind' command with the bundle name of the driver you installed. The syntax for this command would look something like 'kextfind -b <bundle name> -print'. This command should return the directory path of the driver.

Alternatively, you can navigate to the Extensions section in the System Report. To do this, click on the Apple logo in the top-left corner of your screen, then select 'About This Mac'. From there, click on 'System Report', and then navigate to the 'Software' section and select 'Extensions'. This will display a list of extensions and their file paths.

 

[Nora1234]

Hi Deliriouscat,

Thanks again.

Sorry so busy nowadays. Finally got a moment to work on this.

I tried the kextfind command and it returned command not found -

I also tried going to System Report but there is no ‘About this Mac’ under the apple menu.

Also still trying to find out how to go to the extensions folder manually. Googling around now..

 

[Nora1234]

I can’t seem to find an article that shows me how to navigate to the folder manually.

My current directory is /private/var/root

 

[Nora1234]

Ok so I was able to navigate to both:

/Library/Extensions

and

/System/Library/Extensions

..and nothing in there resembles the name of the .dmg file I installed which is:

Mbox_OSX_1.2.13.dmg

The USB audio device is called an Mbox and there is nothing with that name in either folder. The company is Avid and also nothing with that name in either directory.

 

[MacsBug]

Another Option is to boot your Mac into Safe Boot. This will start up your Mac and disable 3rd party extensions.

To boot in Safe Boot Mode, as soon as you start your Mac hold down the Shift key and keep it down until you see the login screen. After you log in you will see Safe Boot in red on the right side of your menubar.

Once your booted in Safe Mode I would download an app called UninstallPKG by corecode (https://www.corecode.io/uninstallpkg).

Run UninstallPKG and select the driver pgk that you installed. It will remove all the files installed by the installer package.

Once you uninstalled the package, restart your mac and everything should be fine.

 

[Nora1234]

Another Option is to boot your Mac into Safe Boot. This will start up your Mac and disable 3rd party extensions.

To boot in Safe Boot Mode, as soon as you start your Mac hold down the Shift key and keep it down until you see the login screen. After you log in you will see Safe Boot in red on the right side of your menubar.

Once your booted in Safe Mode I would download an app called UninstallPKG by corecode (https://www.corecode.io/uninstallpkg).

Run UninstallPKG and select the driver pgk that you installed. It will remove all the files installed by the installer package.

Once you uninstalled the package, restart your mac and everything should be fine.

I tried booting into Safe mode but it doesn’t seem to work. I hold down shift and keep it held but what happens is that the loading bar progresses but then slows down toward the end and never gets to the login screen just like without shift. It shows nothing to indicate I entered Safe mode.

 

[MacsBug]

Booting into Safe Mode for me has been hit and miss. It usually has taken me several tries before it works.

On my MacBook Pro I have to wait till the Apple shows up before holding down the Shift Key. If I hold it down too soon then my MacBook Pro boots normally. On another Mac I have I have to hold the shift key down as soon as the Mac plays the startup sound.

You may need to try several times to enter Safe Boot to figure out the timing for your Mac.

 

[Nora1234]

Interesting I’ll try that thanks.

I was holding it before I even powered it up.

 

[Nora1234]

I tried hitting shift at various times - right after the startup sound, after the Apple appears, before I hit power button and same result the bar goes real slow somewhere in the middle and gets stuck toward the end. I left on for hours and does not boot.

 

[Nora1234]

I had an idea - view the package contents so I can remove them but this is the only Mac I own. I have another PC desktop.

Can anyone view the package contents for me? I would be really grateful.

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/download/Mbox-Drivers

It’s the first Mac download/dmg file:
Version 1.2.13

 

[Nora1234]

So I was able to view the DMG package contents with 7-Zip on my PC, however it doesn’t really give any clue as to what was installed. The package includes an uninstaller.

It would be great if I could run it.

Perhaps I can create a bootable USB and run the uninstaller?

 

[MacsBug]

I downloaded the installer and took a look at what it installed.
Here is a list of the files and its locations.

My guess is that the main file that you would need to remove is the AvidMbox.kext

If you are booted from the recovery partition, the file will be located in the -Data partition/ Library/Extensions

 

[Nora1234]

Hi Macsbug,

Thanks so much for the reply.

When I first open terminal from the Utilities screen (via command+R), it shows:

[-bash-3.2#

I did pwd and directory is:
/private/var/root

So I did ‘cd ..’ until I was in the highest directory ‘/‘ .

Then went to ‘/library/extensions/‘ but do not see that kext file. I also went to ‘/system/library/extensions’ and did not see the ‘ AvidMbox.kext’ file.

Am I doing something wrong?

 

[MacsBug]

In the Terminal, you need to type in cd /Volumes. Then when you so an ls, you will see the volumes. You then want to cd to the volume that ends in - Data. Then you will cd to that volume /Library/Extentions.

Dont forget that in the Mac terminal if there is a space in the name you need to put a \ befire the space. An example of this is that if your HD is labled Macintosh HD, then you would be changing directories by using cd Macintosh\ HD\ -\ Data/Library/Extentions.

 

[Nora1234]

Thank you again for your help.

I went to cd /Volumes but the listing there did not have anything ending in ‘-Data’.

Here is what was listed:

I went into each of those and found another ‘volumes’ which shows a similar listing. There is also a Library/Extensions in each of those and I found the same kext files I saw previously.