OSX Mavericks download stuck

[David Polich]

Does anyone have recommendations on how to restart a paused OSX Mavericks
download on a MBP running SL (10.6.? I've logged back in to the App Store,
selected Mavericks, I see "Install App", I click on that, nothing happens.
It doesn't say "downloading" or anything.

I've read numerous web posts and discussions, all of them end up with "log
back in to the App Store, click on 'Purchases', select OSX Mavericks, and
it will resume". That isn't working for me.

I've also tried re-starting the MBP, whenever I do, I see the OSX Mavericks
icon in the dock, clicking on it says "Paused". If I delete the icon, upon
re-starting it appears again, saying "Paused".

No idea how to get out of this loop. Any help/tips appreciated!

[Phil O]

Don't know if there's anything here that will help:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57 ... tallation/

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Can you boot the MBP in target mode and install from a second machine?

[David Polich]

Phil - thanks for the link. I'm gonna try re-downloading from the App Store
late tonight, when perhaps Apple's servers will be less busy.

MLC - good tip. It's my wife's MBP, my Macs are both on ML and I dont have Mavericks on either of them.

Thanks to you both.

[mhschmieder]

I advise everyone to skip this update; it is EXTREMELY dangerous! I haven't time or energy to go into detail, precisely BECAUSE of all the pain that 10.9.1 has caused me. My computer freezes up constantly just during simple text editing, to the point that my only way out is to power cycle! Things haven't been this bad since the OS9 to OSX transition!

The spinning beach ball of death stares me in the face when least I expect it, and never due to doing anything complex or having a lot of apps running.

One thing curious is that bringing up the Activity Monitor (when possible; it takes forever to launch and isn't always launch-able), shows dozens of unrecognized processes, just like Windoze does as a general rule. I don't remember Mac OS X being like this before, where 90% of Activity Monitor is stuff you haven't a clue what it is, and several screen-heights worth of stuff when all you're running is TextEdit and maybe Mail.

It's also hit-or-miss as to whether Disk Utility will come up, refuse to come up, or crash and/or not let you do a Repair Permissions. The usual tricks for bringing up the Force Quit Menu also rarely work anymore.

Also, as I mentioned in another thread, most URL clicks will erase your entire preferred tab list in Safari, requiring you to either use a cached bookmark list shortcut that you remember to save in the tool bar, or the history menu (if you've opened the lost tabs recently enough as direct actions). Not just clicking from email, but also using the App Store to check for updates! If Safari is running at the time already, usually you're safe though from losing work.

Anyway, be cautious with this update, as it breaks way more things than it fixes. I think the App Store has become the heart of the OS and that the OS is also now tracking everything you do for possible advertising hooks, which might explain the dozens of unidentifiable ghost processes. The original release of Mavericks started this trend but it was minor until 10.9.1.

[mikehalloran]

Dangerous?

I had some minor annoyances but that was all. I had to reinstall DP 7 and 8 and reset my keyboard and trackpad preferences.

Most experienced no problems. Safari is greatly improved - still not as good as Chrome for my day job, however.

I don't update from the App Store. You can always download the updater from support as I do.

I think that a Time Machine restore may be your best option.

[mhschmieder]

I reserve the word "dangerous" for when data loss can occur. Lucky for me, most apps now have their own internal backup schemes, so I recovered most of what was lost without Time Machine.

I didn't know you can bypass the App Store; it feels like Mavericks is built on top of the App Store at this point. All of my old techniques keep taking me back to the App Store.

[mikehalloran]

If you need to restore, it checks the App Store.

You can download the OS for installing onto multiple Macs. I found it looking for the Combo Updater which I didn't find this time around (perhaps because it's the first update?). Anyway, you download it and run it like any other update from the old days. Even with the major updates, you can download the updates from the App Store, save them, then install later. You have to know how but it can be done.

[mhschmieder]

Thanks -- as 10.9.2 is probably very soon, I'll search for the Combo Updater for that one. I've been multi-tasking too many areas of research during this holiday break to want to go down a technical rabbit hole at the moment; I'm trying to just live with all the quirks and hope none of them bit me big. I also run disc repair on my SSD almost daily just to be safe.

[James Steele]

YMMV. 10.9.1 working fine for me.

[mhschmieder]

I'm more and more thinking the problem at my end is lack of disc space for swapping, VM, etc., as Mavericks is quite hungry (along with the new Safari) and I was already too close for comfort as it was (though I recovered up to 7 GB of SSD system drive space by finding more things I could get away with aliasing to another internal drive).

The new Safari is a HUGE improvement over ANY of the previous versions, other than for resource use, but it's understandable given how powerful it now is. Also, it has a restartable download manager built in now that is every bit as good as Opera's. It's about the only browser I use on the Mac anymore as it's much faster now, has more of the critical features I depended on from the now-defunct Camino and from Firefox, and a greatly improved rendering engine.

I'm still not sure why there's so much going on in the Activity Monitor, but it may just be that we're being shown more than before. I absolutely love the enhancements to Activity Monitor and the Storage tab of "About This Mac" -- there's so much detail there now and this helps track down problems, while at the same time containing a lot of info (in Activity Monitor) that I haven't quite wrapped my head around yet.

I had several downloads crash earlier tonight and Safari restarted them with no problem whatsoever. Download issues were the main reason I used other browsers before.