There's a reason many of us here at Ars wait a few days (or in some cases, weeks) after an OS update before installing it: reports of problems after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.7.3 have begun multiplying since its release on Wednesday afternoon. But don't worry—you don't have to wait for Apple to issue a fix, as reinstalling with the 10.7.3 Combo updater seems to take care of the various upgrade issues.

The most prominent problem that some users are running into appears to involve a bizarre series of question mark images labeled "CUI" popping up on various screens and error boxes. (See the image at the top of this post for an example posted from MacRumors.) The CUI error seems to appear in place of buttons and scroll bars, and there's currently a nine-page (and growing) thread on the Apple discussion boards about the problem. Other users have reported issues with repetitive app crashing and endless progress indicators.

On the upside, there appears to be an easy (if not somewhat redundant) fix if you've already updated and are seeing these issues. Installing the 10.7.3 Combo update—a 1.2GB download from Apple's website—on top of your existing 10.7.3 installation reportedly remedies the problems introduced from Software Update. If you use Time Machine and want to roll back your install altogether, you can do that too before applying the combo update.

Those of us at Ars who have already updated haven't run into these issues yet, but have you?

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