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I locked my iMac's HD and I cannot get it to work anymore.

V

VITGL

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi Guys,

I made a mistake and locked the HD of my iMac (OS X 10.4 Tiger) and when I turn it on I just have a blue desktop and I can see and use the mouse cursor. That's all I see!

Is there anything I can do?

Thank you - I appreciate your help.
 
How did you lock it? Hold down option key while booting and select the HD/partition which has OS X installed. See my guide as well
 
Hellhammer said:
How did you lock it? Hold down option key while booting and select the HD/partition which has OS X installed. See my guide as well
Click to expand...


Hellhammer, thanks for your help.

I wanted to lock a folder on my desktop and i locked the main HD folder. What I mean with locked is to just not allowing anyone but me to open the folder. I have done this several times with other folders and to re-open them I entered my password.

The problem here is that I don't know how to enter my password to unlock the HD.

I tried your guide too and this shouldn't be a hardware failure but just a permission issue. I have tried SMC and PRAM resets and also the safe boot but nothing happened.

Every time I switch the imac on everything starts normally (I hear the sound, white background with the apple appears and then the circle runs and finally a little window with the growing blue bar showing the boot). Then it's all BLUE with the black cursor that I can move. That's all.

I hope this is clearer.
Thank you
 
Right-click it and select Show Information and on the bottom there is Sharing and Permissions, make sure system and admin have read and write rights.
 
Hellhammer said:
Right-click it and select Show Information and on the bottom there is Sharing and Permissions, make sure system and admin have read and write rights.
Click to expand...


Nothing happens. I can only move the cursor in this blue background.
 
You're going to have to fix this one of three ways, since logging in normally isn't possible anymore:

1. Using Single-User Mode to log in as root and fix the permissions - unless you know what you're doing at the command line, this can actually cause more problems than it solves. If you're comfortable at the command prompt, though, this is worth trying.

2. Archive and Install the OS, preserving users and network settings (if you have Snow Leopard, the installer does this for you when you reinstall).

3. Boot from the OS install disc. Repair Permissions via Disk Utility. Reboot back to your normal install. Repair permissions again. (The easiest method)
 
Boot from Install DVD and repair permissions in Disk Utility - it should help in your case.

Edit: wrldwzrd89 was quicker 🙂
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
You're going to have to fix this one of three ways, since logging in normally isn't possible anymore:

1. Using Single-User Mode to log in as root and fix the permissions - unless you know what you're doing at the command line, this can actually cause more problems than it solves. If you're comfortable at the command prompt, though, this is worth trying.

2. Archive and Install the OS, preserving users and network settings (if you have Snow Leopard, the installer does this for you when you reinstall).

3. Boot from the OS install disc. Repair Permissions via Disk Utility. Reboot back to your normal install. Repair permissions again. (The easiest method)
Click to expand...


Thanks. I will try this.
 
THANK YOU very much to you all. The Install disk did the trick and I am now just as I was before.
 
Dang,
did that recently with my MB,forced to me to reinstall.Thank you Apple for shipping software restore disks with my computer,not like most pc makers like Dell and HP.🙄
 
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