what happened to my mac?

[krossfyter]

i hope my hd didnt die. well heres the deal...

i try to start the laptop up again and once it gets through the grey apple screen then the mac os x screen it turns into a black login screen. something to do with a darwin login console thing that asks me for my login and password. what do i do? im clueless about this stuff so please anyone help a brother out. thanks.


im praying for my mac right now.


:(

[krossfyter]

i just typed in "logout" in that command line bsd ***** and it took me back into my regular login screen, a sight that made me happy.... and then i proceeded as usual. So it came back to life. My mac is slow as hell and somethings wrong with it but im not sure. I used drive os 10 on it recently. What should i do to it?
i have 14 gigs of free space so that shouldnt be a problem. so my macs really sluggish right now... im serious.
i must sound like a complete dumba*s to most of you tech folks. i apologize.


heh

[iChan]

I had the same problem before, but I could not log in at all... i simply replaced my HD because I wanted to do it all along anyway...

sorry I don't have any better advice for you... good luck

[krossfyter]

no problem man. hds cost how much? 200 plus right?

[Wes]

HDs vary in price a lot, from $60 to $300 depending on capacity. Try this to fix your mac first though.

Go to disk utility, disk first aid, and then repair permissions. Then restart the mac holding Command and S, and it will go to that text screen again, type
Fsck -y <press enter>
and let it work, when it's done, type that again and press enter until it stops saying it found errors, type reboot to restart.

And it's about time I left to my final exam, French....:mad: :( :(

[krossfyter]

thanks for the help wes. im trying to access my disk utility but its not opening. that beach ball thing is doing its thing... not able to get into it. messed up.

[Finiksa]

Originally posted by krossfyter
thanks for the help wes. im trying to access my disk utility but its not opening. that beach ball thing is doing its thing... not able to get into it. messed up.

You could just wait (perhaps hours) and see if it responds or boot from the OS X install disk and use its disk utility app.

[kuyu]

best buy has 120 gb western digitals with 7200 RPM and 8MB cache for $70 after fifty dollar mail in rebate. To good to pass up.

[Versello]

Originally posted by kuyu
best buy has 120 gb western digitals with 7200 RPM and 8MB cache for $70 after fifty dollar mail in rebate. To good to pass up.

I don't see that on BestBuy's webby :(

[KBFinFan]

A good deal like that is probably store only- so they can get you in to buy more delicious electronic goodies.

[Wes]

I am 90% certain it is not a physical disk problem, boot off the CD as somebody else said, and try repairing permissions on your drive there.

[Kwyjibo]

he has a laptop, so drive wil lbe more expesnive and infintely harder to install

[Mord]

saying what laptop you have is a good idea were not phsycic

[krossfyter]

thanks for the help guys.

yeah so i did get to do that disk aid thing without using the cd. still sluggish. i did the fsck-y deal... still sluggish. im now using drive 10 and may use diskwarrior after that.

i have a powerbook g4 667 (rev c model).

[krossfyter]

just wondering what the cheapest price you all have seen a hard drive for a powerbook g4 667. im looking at the 40gb and or 60gb. I saw a 40 for near 200 bucks.

Just looking into hard drives just in case my hard drive is about to go to hard drive heaven. i used drive 10 on it and its still pretty sluggish. i wonder if i need to just wipe out my hard drive and re install mac os x?

[Les Kern]

Originally posted by krossfyter
I wonder if i need to just wipe out my hard drive and re install mac os x?

Seems to be indicated. If you do an erase/install and it STILL does it... well, there you go.As for the black login screen on startup:
I have two towers running Tenon's iTools as DNS and Mail servers. Both are configured pretty much the same besides a few other apps like EmuMail. BOTH boot, but not always, to a black login screen. I have to type "exit" to retry a boot. Two or three tries does it. After a few phone calls Apple had no idea, I even had a UNIX god walk away from them. I can't do the reinstall because first these are too critical to have down for more than a few minutes, and I am in the process of configuring some XServes to take over for them. When those new servers are up and golden, I plan on investigating why the towers act as they do. Okay, lots of words for no advice. Sorry.
Well, okay, I say back the data up with target disk, and write some zeros.

[5300cs]

Originally posted by Kwyjibo
he has a laptop, so drive wil lbe more expesnive and infintely harder to install

Well, laptop HDs are more expensive, but the TiBook's HD is relatively easy to replace; it's not buried too deep in the case. A clamshell iBook on the other hand ... :rolleyes:

Can you get in long enough to backup? You might want to just reformat the sucker. Worked in the windows world ;)

[iJon]

your hard drive shouldnt be dead, if it was dead you wouldnt see the apple logo because thats part of the operating system, which it is obviously loading.

iJon

[krossfyter]

Originally posted by iJon
your hard drive shouldnt be dead, if it was dead you wouldnt see the apple logo because thats part of the operating system, which it is obviously loading.

iJon


true. i mis stated what i was trying to say. what i mean was that my hard drive seems to be on the fritz. not sure but why is is acting so slow. i did the drive 10 thing and it has helped a lot. however when i start the computer up it takes forever for it to run.... other things are slow to but not as slow as before.

thanks for your kind support man.

[krossfyter]

Originally posted by 5300cs
Well, laptop HDs are more expensive, but the TiBook's HD is relatively easy to replace; it's not buried too deep in the case. A clamshell iBook on the other hand ... :rolleyes:

Can you get in long enough to backup? You might want to just reformat the sucker. Worked in the windows world ;)


yeah man im backing my mac up right now so that i can do a clean install.

[iJon]

Originally posted by krossfyter
true. i mis stated what i was trying to say. what i mean was that my hard drive seems to be on the fritz. not sure but why is is acting so slow. i did the drive 10 thing and it has helped a lot. however when i start the computer up it takes forever for it to run.... other things are slow to but not as slow as before.

thanks for your kind support man.
have you listened to it, it may slowly be on its way to giving you the click of death, try listening to see if it sounds odd.

iJon

[krossfyter]

Originally posted by Les Kern
Seems to be indicated. If you do an erase/install and it STILL does it... well, there you go.As for the black login screen on startup:
I have two towers running Tenon's iTools as DNS and Mail servers. Both are configured pretty much the same besides a few other apps like EmuMail. BOTH boot, but not always, to a black login screen. I have to type "exit" to retry a boot. Two or three tries does it. After a few phone calls Apple had no idea, I even had a UNIX god walk away from them. I can't do the reinstall because first these are too critical to have down for more than a few minutes, and I am in the process of configuring some XServes to take over for them. When those new servers are up and golden, I plan on investigating why the towers act as they do. Okay, lots of words for no advice. Sorry.
Well, okay, I say back the data up with target disk, and write some zeros.

so this black login screen is very rare? i told an expierenced mac guy about this incident and they were perplexed.

huh.... i hope you get to the "root" (no pun intended) of the matter. good luck with this project man.

[krossfyter]

Originally posted by iJon
have you listened to it, it may slowly be on its way to giving you the click of death, try listening to see if it sounds odd.

iJon

yeah man... it makes clickin noises... especially when starting up. click... click ....click.


i had this guy look at it (that expierenced mac guy) and he said he doesnt think my hd is jacked. but im still taking precautions and trying to set aside some money for a new hd just in case.

[Wes]

If it's clicking, you don't have much time. BACK THAT THING UP! It's only a matter of time before the reading head digs into the drive.

[krossfyter]

*****!


would buying an apple warranty help me out?... will they fix this if i get on or it doesnt work like that?

[Marlon_JBT]

This sucks! I'm going through the same thing as you krossfyter!

My PB takes an hour or two, or an entire morning to boot (no kidding), the hard drive clicks (one click about every second, then after maybe... 7 clicks, there's a pause, then it starts again), Safari takes 20 minutes to start, some programs just freeze the entire laptop, rendering it unusuable completely. Don't let the hard drive just STOP reading and writing, then I have to reboot... which is guaranteed to take hours. When it boots to the UNIX login screen, that extends it about another hour or two, because I have to log out, then log in again. I also seem to have another problem, extreme overheating (I know that I have a 12" PB Rev. 1, but this is much worse), and my fan comes on almost all of the time. Keep in mind that all I do with the PB now is surf, and IM, if I can do that. This has taken much of my battery life away.

I went from weeks of uptime, to a reboot about every two days. I've got a backup from 10-29-03, and if I have done anything with the PowerBook since then, it is either on my other computer, or my USB flash drive, so I'm not worried about my information. Honestly, I've got my entire home folder on another hard drive in another machine.

Apple wants $50! Now, I ask, could I take this thing to an Apple Store, for them to fix it? The $50 is a charge to talk to Tech Support. I don't want to talk to tech support, I JUST WANT IT FIXED!

This is quite frustrating, and I've been dealing with it for a month now, but.......... I still love my PowerBook for some strange reason....

[krossfyter]

try backing up your mac then doing a clean install of osx. erase and install that is.... see if that helps any.

[Horrortaxi]

Back up, if you can, but I don't think reformatting and resintalling the OS will do any good. This sounds like a dying drive--it might not even work reliably enough to finish installing the OS.

If your computer is under a year old it's still under warranty. You could also still buy AppleCare to extend the coverage. The only tricky thing might be convincing Apple over the phone that your drive is hosed. Now that I think about it, maybe you should try reinstalling the OS--along with all the language packs, printer drivers, developer tools, X11--finish off that drive once and for all.

[Marlon_JBT]

I have reinstalled OS X twice. Both times, of course, was a LONG process for something I'm sure only takes a little more than a hour, or less. I've repaired permissions, ran the hardware test, which stopped at the hard drive, the error I cannot recall.

I used the Command+ V trick to view the UNIX start up messages. Of course, everything is slow, but during the disk check, I get volume errors, which say "Volume is 869650 Volume should be 869640" or something along those lines. When the applications start to load, like the Apache Web Server, it usually does this...

Waiting for Apache web server
Waiting for Apache web server

and so on and so on, for each application. A long and lengthy process. I wish it would die now, but it's going through a long and slow death.