i put in a music cd to listen, and it opened itunes, and said there were updates available

so i let it do that, then it said it needed to restart, ao i said ok

most everything went away but a box that said it was downloading the updates

it just fr4oze like thst, so i pushed the power key to make it shut down

waited a few minutes then tried to start it back up

it keeps popping up w/a dark screen and a box in front that says:

You need to restart your computer. Hold down the power butt9on for sever4al secondes or press the Restart button.

but nothin ghappens, just comes back to that same screen. HELP!

seriously? i lost the whole converaqation

try holding down shift during startup until the apple appears. it will go into a safe mode. might fix the problem itself

nope same thing!

Something in the interrupted updates hosed a critical system file. You can boot from your MacBook's original DVD and reinstall the OS—it

take a while and you will need enough room for it to move some files around (several GB on the hard drive).

You should also consider running Disk Utility (which you can reach from the Mac OS X Installer) to make sure your drive is OK.

If you have a Time Machine drive, I recommend backing all your files up to it as soon as you can. Then, if the updates cause

problems again, you can use Time Machine to restore more quickly.

(This all assumes you're using Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard.")

Finally—if all of this seems overwhelming, make an appointment and take your MacBook to the nearest Apple store. They'll help!

Tasha, I sent you a longish e-mail with more details. I hope it helps!

thanks so much. i'm trying to boot from the disc. tried first from original, and then reslized i probably need to go from leopard instead

going to attempt that, and if not working, i'll just erase and reinstall. i don't really have anything of importance on the hard drive NEway

Make sure to use Disk Utility to check the drive—it could be that it's starting to fail, in which case reinstalling will be a waste

of time. You can get MacBook drives replaced through various third parties these days.