Mac OS X 10.6.5 Update Renders Mac with PGP Disk Encryption Unbootable

Yesterday, we published the news about Apple Mac OS X 10.6.5 update being available. Well, it has been found that Mac OS users running 10.6.4 with PGP Whole Disk Encryption may render their systems unbootable after they update to 10.6.5. PGP has issued an alert for all those users and have asked them not to update their systems.

Alert: Mac OS X PGP WDE customers should not apply the recent Mac OS X 10.6.5 update. Compatibility issues may prevent the system from successfully booting.

In the interim, customers can accomplish the upgrade safely if the PGP Whole Disk Encrypted system is first decrypted, then apply the MAC OS X 10.6.5 update and then re-encrypt. We will provide a detailed update how to upgrade a PGP Whole Disk Encrypted system to Mac OS X 10.6.5 as soon as a solution has been identified.

For users who have already upgraded to 10.6.5 with PGP WDE encryption in place and thus are having an unbootable system, PGP recommend booting from the PGP Recovery CD.

You will also need to download the script “PGPwdeEFIUpdate.sh” from the PGP support site.

Procedure (as described at the PGP support site):

  1. Boot the system using the PGP Recovery CD.
  2. When prompted, authenticate with your passphrase. DO NOT press D to decrypt. Press any key (e.g. spacebar) to boot into Mac OS X normally.
  3. Once logged into Mac OS X, PGP Desktop will automatically fix the boot issue and you should no longer need the recovery CD.
  4. Download the script “PGPwdeEFIUpdate.sh” to your desktop.
  5. Open terminal and navigate to your desktop directory by typing “cd ~/Desktop” and pressing enter.
  6. Type in the command “chmod 755 PGPwdeEFIUpdate.sh” and press enter.
  7. Type in the command “sudo./PGPwdeEFIUpdate.sh” and press enter.

Note: We haven’t tested this procedure and for the sake of it, we have kept the procedure as it was given at the PGP site.

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