A few days ago my Mac desktop (running OS X 10.6.8) started acting weird. When I try to start it up, it makes the startup tone but then hangs on the white screen with the grey logo and spinning gear. A loading bar will appear for a few seconds and then disappear, and the gear just keeps spinning and nothing else happens.
It takes several tries to get a successful boot. Then the internet doesn't work 50% of the time. Every other device in the house connects to the wifi just fine. The mac is the only device having problems. The connection is irregular and either can't get started at all, or constantly goes on and off. I'm surprised it's stayed connected throughout me typing this.
I tried booting in safe mode and the mode that requires holding command R (or whatever it is), and neither of them work. It's just the same loading screen as normal with no indication that a different mode is being accessed, and again, it just hangs on that screen.
I tried downloading an antivirus (Avast) just in case there was an infection, and the installer fails because it "couldn't create the file." I made a new admin account to try bypassing that, and was told that there isn't enough disk space to install anything, which is definitely not true as there are barely any extra programs and almost no documents saved on this mac, AND I had removed a lot of stuff beforehand so there is no way that there's not enough space. Then when I try to access the applications/documents/etc drives on that account, it says I don't have permission to access it. Even though it's an admin account. It won't let me update any software either, it says it can't create the file or the file doesn't exist or something along those lines. It won't even let me reinstall OS X.
The problems first started when I was browsing with Firefox a few days ago. Firefox crashed, then the rest of the computer crashed, and I had to do a cold shut down. It happened a second time when I rebooted, and then it was fine the rest of the day, and then all of this started happening and it's been happening for a couple of days now.
I don't have any means to back up my files and there is no earlier save state to restore to, so I'm worried I'll end up having to restore the mac to factory settings and lose everything.
It takes several tries to get a successful boot. Then the internet doesn't work 50% of the time. Every other device in the house connects to the wifi just fine. The mac is the only device having problems. The connection is irregular and either can't get started at all, or constantly goes on and off. I'm surprised it's stayed connected throughout me typing this.
I tried booting in safe mode and the mode that requires holding command R (or whatever it is), and neither of them work. It's just the same loading screen as normal with no indication that a different mode is being accessed, and again, it just hangs on that screen.
I tried downloading an antivirus (Avast) just in case there was an infection, and the installer fails because it "couldn't create the file." I made a new admin account to try bypassing that, and was told that there isn't enough disk space to install anything, which is definitely not true as there are barely any extra programs and almost no documents saved on this mac, AND I had removed a lot of stuff beforehand so there is no way that there's not enough space. Then when I try to access the applications/documents/etc drives on that account, it says I don't have permission to access it. Even though it's an admin account. It won't let me update any software either, it says it can't create the file or the file doesn't exist or something along those lines. It won't even let me reinstall OS X.
The problems first started when I was browsing with Firefox a few days ago. Firefox crashed, then the rest of the computer crashed, and I had to do a cold shut down. It happened a second time when I rebooted, and then it was fine the rest of the day, and then all of this started happening and it's been happening for a couple of days now.
I don't have any means to back up my files and there is no earlier save state to restore to, so I'm worried I'll end up having to restore the mac to factory settings and lose everything.
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