Can't do anything with disk utility - everything is grayed out

[Manic Harmonic]

I'm not sure what caused this, but I'm on OSX Lion on a 2011 MBP and all of a sudden I can't do anything with disk utility. I mean ANYTHING. I can't repair disk permissions, repair disk, partition, format, or erase any disk, including external drives. I have another Lion partition on my second hard drive that does not have this issue. Both Recovery partitions do not have this issue. Obviously I can still use this as a workaround, but it's definitely less than ideal. What should I do?

 

[GGJstudios]

Are you logged in on an admin account?

 

[Manic Harmonic]

yes, I only have one account on this hard drive.

 

[eatrocks]

Can't Erase, Partition nor Restore

Same here, disk utility is almost totally non-functional. The only thing I can do is view disks and partitions, I can't even eject a removable disk (eject still works from Finder though).
I booted from my home-made Lion install thumb drive and Disk Utility appears to be functional from there.

 

[squeakr]

Some functionality is removed when booted into the main drive partition you are trying to access as a safety feature and to gain the full functionality, one must boot from a recovery partition or external drive (this happened with things such as reformats and such).

 

[nova62400]

Fixed (mine)

I came here having this issue. The problem was that disk util had 2 windows open, so check the window menu.
Closed both windows and relaunched it and all was well.

 

[Luci3n]

I came here having this issue. The problem was that disk util had 2 windows open, so check the window menu.
Closed both windows and relaunched it and all was well.

I just had this problem. All options on Disk Utility were greyed out. This was the answer. Very odd that two windows were option.