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Recurring Invalid Node Structure issues

D

Danij3boys

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 29, 2007
8
0
I have an 8 month old Macbook; I switched from my Dell desktop PC in March.

Has anyone else had recurring Invalid Node Structure issues? My computer got hung up on the gray screen after the most recent Tiger update 10/15 (either from that or the Halo demo my son downloaded!). I ran disk utility from the Install disk and the disk could not be repaired, of course. I erased the disk (because it wouldn't stay mounted) and then reinstalled Tiger (with help from Apple Support).

9 days went by; I didn't put any music, files, anything back on. No extra 3rd party apps or anything. While switching users one day, 9 days later, it got hung up again. After a hard restart, again the spinning gear. Again, invalid node structure. Again, I erased the hard drive and reinstalled the OS.

Weird thing each time: Mail opens up with NO trash can on the left with the Inbox and Sent. MAJOR pain to fix each time. Delete the Mail app; reinstall just the Mail app. Take it out of the dock; open it from the Applications menu. Hope and pray the Trash can shows up after all that.

Now, just 4 days after the latest "erase and reinstall", it has done the same thing again! I downloaded Flip 4 Mac and it got hung up during the installation; Finder became inactive and I had to Force Quit Finder. Restarted the computer, ran disk utility from the install disk and again: invalid node structure, invalid B-Tree catalog, invalid record count, etc.

What do I do now? I AM in contact with Apple support and my Macbook is being sent back to Apple. But, I'm wondering though if I have done something to cause these issues (so I can avoid them in the future!) or if the hard drive is bad. Or what?!

Thanks!

Danielle
 
B-Tree Node Size Error

I just had this exact same problem with my MBP, but I could not do a clean install or anything. I had a 6 pound paper weight. Took it to an Apple store and they replaced the hard drive no questions asked. Told me I could buy this certain software (DiskWarrior) to solve the problem for $100. I told them why should I have to pay for a problem that happened with a 3 month old SR MBP. They did not have an answer.

When this happened to me, I was on facebook and macrumors and then everything got extremely slow and then stopped except for the spinning beach ball.

Like I said, took it to the Apple store and exactly one week later I had my MBP back with a new hard drive.
 
Thanks for the reply! I don't guess it's all that common though given the lack of replies.
 
Hello,

I just wanted to let you know that you don't have to erase and install every time there's a file system error. You can run disk utility off the OS X install disc and repair your boot up volume from there. ;)

Cheers.
 
I know. BUT, the disk is not repairable when I try that. I have tried your advice MANY times. Every time, it comes back with an error-"disk not repairable". Thus, I've had to erase and install each time.

nikiski said:
Hello,

I just wanted to let you know that you don't have to erase and install every time there's a file system error. You can run disk utility off the OS X install disc and repair your boot up volume from there. ;)

Cheers.
Click to expand...
 
I was really genuinely happy to see this thread. I've had the EXACT same problem : Reoccuring hangs and the HDD not mounting, kernel panics and flashing folder icon and Disk utility giving me Invalid Node structure error.

I have an iMac Core Duo about a 1 year 7 months old. It happened first a month ago the day after my external firewire HDD failed on me containing all my backups. I had just recently installed Leopard and was just thinking of using TimeMachine to back everthing up. But what do you know, I get the system hang, some unknown program went non responsive and had to close, after that the whole computer froze, except the spinning beach ball of doom. I restart and voila, there it is, the flashing folder icon flashing at me laughing.

It took me a few days of brute force to get the Disk Utility going, I even tried putting the computer into SingleUser mode to try and manually mount the drive, as disk utility gave me always the same error, Invalid Node Structure. I couldn't erase my drive since all my stuff was still on it. One thing caught my eye, I use Boot Camp a bit and when I opened Disk Utility using the Leopard disk the computer didn't display the Mac OS X partition, only the 25gb Boot Camp partition and somehow the name of that partition had changed to 17127 BLACK HAWKF22.. It too like a minute for that to really sink it :p

I ended with putting the iMac in Target Disk mode and manually moved all my music and photos to a external USB HDD using my MacBook Pro as the "connection" (iMac + FireWire to MacBook Pro + USB external HDD). Took nearly 6 hours, just like the HDD in the iMac wasn't spinning at the correct speed. After that I did an Erase & Install with Leopard.

Everything worked fine for about 5 days, like Danielle I didn't put anything on it except VLC and used Mail. On the 5th day it failed again, giving the exact same error as before. I did an Erase & Install again but this time using the Tiger install disk that came with the computer. Only 4 hours later it failed.

Now I have an appointment with Apple IMC (Iceland doesn't have an official Apple store) after the weekend. I tried to explain the issue to an employee but he didn't even know what Single User mode was. So I'm holding my breath hoping to get some answers to this bizarre occurence.

Sorry for the long post. I'll post again once I get a clear answer from the Apple store. :D
 
So I got a call today from Apple IMC here in Iceland saying my appointment is today at 11:30. I go up there drop of my computer and leave. At about 16:30 the same day a man called from Apple saying the hard drive in the computer was for some reason fried, didn't spin up correctly and had a bad connection. So he replaced it and I could go and pick it up whenever I wanted.

So that concludes this story, for me anyways. Hope this was of some help.

Regards,
Trausti
:apple::D
 
Same for me. I got my Macbook back today with a new hard drive installed in it. Hopefully that will be the end of my troubles!
 
DiskWarrior is worth owning, if only because it can repair hard drive errors that Disk Utility can't touch. However, if problems like this tend to occur frequently, then the drive itself is certainly suspect. Didn't Apple just acknowledge a batch of bad drives?
 
From what I read online, yes, my Macbook did have one of the faulty Seagate hard drives. They could be in iMacs too, I guess.

And, yes, Disk Warrior is definitely something I'll be purchasing with Christmas cash! :)

Danielle
 
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