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need help with with hard drive permissions

O

osin

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 8, 2008
309
10
New Jersey
so I went to "get info" on my hard drive changed permissions from "everyone: read only" to "no access", restarted machine and OS won't startup. there is a white screen with apple and computer resets itself after couple minutes. I've tried to boot in safety mode but it didn't help either.
any ideas how to fix it?
 
I am not going ot ask the obvious question as to why you would want to change that permission however, you hare going to have to get your installation disk and boot to it and run disk utility from it.
 
Err ... ouch.

Repair permissions from the DVD ... but if you did apply to all.

If it is just the HD and not the files, you should be able to restore the drive permissions.
 
So I opened the disk utility and my drive has a lock on its icon. What do I do next? When I want to verify permissions there is a message: " first aid failed. Disk utility stoped verifying permisions because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit"

Have no idea what to do next...
 
Is there anything that can be done to recover from this situation?
Or should I simply give up and reinstall OS?
 
If you have another disk or partition to install a fresh copy of os x then try migration assistant or copy the data from the damaged partition manually to the new one.

Not sure what else to suggest..
 
Sounds like the drive itself is locked out with "no access" ...

Probably have to start from another volume, and use terminal or something that lets you look at the drive to do a get info on it so you can change the permissions back.

If you can get into the drive with single user mode it might help, since that will give you a command line to repair the drive.
 
Sun Baked said:
Sounds like the drive itself is locked out with "no access" ...

Probably have to start from another volume, and use terminal or something that lets you look at the drive to do a get info on it so you can change the permissions back.

If you can get into the drive with single user mode it might help, since that will give you a command line to repair the drive.
Click to expand...

If I won't get into single user mode I'm planning on installing fresh OS on spare hard drive.
Could you verify this info: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106712 if this is what you thinking of or is there anything else I should try? This time I want to be 100% sure before I will touch "hdd permissions" ;)

Thank you for helping out
 
So good new is I can get into the single user mode ":/ root#" but have no idea what folders/files I should look for and change permissions of... Yes I'm a total noob...
 
1. Don't do anything that you don't know anything about in the future. (Don't change permission globally, etc.)

2. Contact Apple Care / schedule appointment with Genius Bar.
 
for those interested or willing to help I have a little update.
I reinstalled the OS on new hard drive. Now when I want to access my other drive there is a little "lock" on its icon and when I want to open the drive in Finder there is a message: The folder could not be opened because you do not have sufficient access privileges. When I go to Get Info I can't change the permissions. So the problems isn't fixed yet, but at least I have computer running...

any idea how to fix it at this point?
 
Consultant said:
1. Don't do anything that you don't know anything about in the future. (Don't change permission globally, etc.)

2. Contact Apple Care / schedule appointment with Genius Bar.
Click to expand...

I was hoping that there will be Genius Bar member on this forum that could help out ;) I won't have time, working late, this week to go to Apple store. That is why I'm trying to fix this myself, with huge help from this forum of course :)
 
another update, just to leave a mark for others in the future...
I did repair the permissions on 2nd drive by using software called Mac Pilot. It did so fast that I felt really stupid with that whole time wasted...:mad:
 
kosin said:
another update, just to leave a mark for others in the future...
I did repair the permissions on 2nd drive by using software called Mac Pilot. It did so fast that I felt really stupid with that whole time wasted...:mad:
Click to expand...

Thats really good news you got it sorted. Presumably you would still have had to install os x again on another drive in order to run Mac Pilot.

I have also read that if the permissions are totally screwed and connot be repaired there is this program that could be of use to gain access to the files http://www.macchampion.com/arbysoft/Welcome.html
 
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