Got PGP on OSX? How to Fix Your Boot Failure After an Update

February 2, 2012 by Stephen Clay   Comments (4)

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You've just installed a new OSX update and after the reboot you aren't invited to enter your PGP password and your computer is useless (see right). 

Word on the streets is that core OSX updates commonly break the booting mechanism of machines with PGP Desktop full disk encryption.

Recommended Fix

Follow the instructions here, which lead you to download a CD boot image (here for PGP 10.2), to burn it to CD and boot to it. You can then enter your PGP password and boot into OSX. Do NOT press "d"; this would start a 10+ hour hard drive decryption.

Alternate Fix

Find your OSX install disk, and follow the instructions in Part 1 of the PDF available here. These are older instructions, but this method apparently still works.

Update!

UF IT maintains a page on PGP, where the latest news is posted (like this!). It's generally suggested to hold off on installing OSX updates until PGP has issued a fix, which they seldom do quick enough to prevent these problems.

Also, this post was re-written in light of info in Symantec's official announcement.

Sounds like a better fix is to just delete PGP and stick with file vault. Is there any official word on this?

Peter Zimmerman 104 days ago

Officially FileVault does not meet the requirements because it's impossible for UF to verify that a lost device was encrypted at the time of loss.

Stephen Clay 104 days ago

@Peter, the official Symantec fix is much easier than what I'm having to do.

Stephen Clay 104 days ago

Nice! I've got the grey 'point of no return' screen. Funny, I wasn't even trying to do an OS X update, I was just updating firmware for wireless routers, and an Airport Utility update.

But after a half hour of updating, I've got a dead box. Thanks for blazing the trail for us, Steve. Maybe I can bum that boot CD off of you. The really fun thing is my machine doesn't even seem to go to sleep when I close the lid...and I'm afraid to shut it down cold...so I guess it will just keep running until tomorrow.

Bummer.

Benjamin Allen Campbell 101 days ago