Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Clicked "update" and now have big problems...

L

lmrook

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 14, 2014
9
0
Washington
my mid 2008 imac has run perfectly fine for 6 years. Last year I purchased more RAM (?)-- I am not a computer geek-- and upgraded the operating system, eventually to OS X Mavericks (I think I had to upgrade to snow leopard first, then move on to the lates). Anyhow, I clicked on the "update" button and now I get the gray screen with the apple logo and the "circle".

I've been able to get to disk utility ... but I am unable to verify or repair some of the things listed.

First line is a picture of a hard drive with: 320.07 BG WDC WD320....
Next line is indented picture of a hard drive with: 6552630 + 652356230
Then a CD looking icon with the word "superdrive" below that.

Then further down:
Picture of a disk and "Disk 1"
indented pictured of hard drive OSX Base System

The bottom "OSX Base System" can be verified and no repairs needed.

The upper 2 items (320.07 GB.... and 6552630....) cannot be verified completely or repaired. It says "volume repair complete, updating boot support partitions for the volume as requested" in RED.

I tried to reinstall OS X Mavericks, but the disks listed (I'm not even sure which one to use, so I tried both listed) say they disks are locked.

I tried to use terminal to look at the volumes based on a google search, but so far all terminal prompts come back invalid.

I do not have time machine, or back up-- so if there is any way to "repair" or "reinstall" that would be great.

At this point, I am in over my head and done trying to figure it out using other peoples questions that are not exactly like mine . . . :p

Any ideas?
 
You could try using Apple's Disk Recovery function, which was installed when you updated to Mavericks.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

This is the relevant paragraph... After you get to the Utilities, you can run Disk Utility from there. Hopefully that should be enough:

OS X Recovery includes a built in set of utilities as part of the Recovery System. To start your computer from Recovery, restart your Mac and hold down the Command key and the R key (Command-R). Press and hold these keys until the Apple logo appears. This indicates that your Mac is starting up. After the Recovery System finishes starting up, you should see a desktop with an OS X menu bar and a "Mac OS X Utilities" window.
Click to expand...

Try running Disk Repair from here. If this doesn't fix it, you can continue with the next steps, re-installing OSX.

Normally, I'd say don't do this without a backup, but if you don't have one, then you don't have one.

There's also another tool you can try called "Disk Warrior", but it costs $100.

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11707/diskwarrior

Since I have Disk Warrior, that would be the first thing I'd try, but you might try Apple's Disk Recovery first and maybe save the money.

You might get other suggestions here that are better than mine, but if you do get your computer back, the first thing you have to do is back it up. Good luck!
 
Thanks for replying. I have tried using disk utility to reinstall, but it says my "disk is locked", so I cannot proceed. Any idea on how to unlock the disks?

----------

I should also mention, I was able to get to the utilities and attempt a repair, but could not get the repair or the verification to complete-- which is why I went on to try to reinstall.
 
You can first try booting in Safe Mode. (Start computer, and hold down shift key as soon as you hear the chime... release the key when you see the progress bar on screen). If this works, it could clear the problem. If it completes the startup process, than shut down and try booting normally.

If you have Mavericks installed, you should also be able to boot into Recovery mode by starting the computer and holding down the Command and R keys until you see the progress bar on the screen. From there you can also try to repair the Volume. Do you have an external Hard Drive connected?
 
lmrook said:
Then further down:
Picture of a disk and "Disk 1"
indented pictured of hard drive OSX Base System

The bottom "OSX Base System" can be verified and no repairs needed.

The upper 2 items (320.07 GB.... and 6552630....) cannot be verified completely or repaired. It says "volume repair complete, updating boot support partitions for the volume as requested" in RED.
Click to expand...

It sounds like your hard drive is bad and it is coincidental it happened while doing this upgrade. Often these upgrades involve a lot of disk activity and it can push a borderline drive right over the cliff.
 
Old problem fixed, now I have a new one . . . .

Okay . . . thank you for all the ideas . . . I tried them all to no avail (except the partition thing, because I had no idea what you were talking about).

I went ahead and made an appointment at the genius bar. They were able to save my data (I purchased an Airport Time Capsule), and reinstall Mavericks OS. I ended up getting the AirPort Time Capsule because of the modem capability. The modem we have from the phone company isn't very good.

Now I have a new problem. I forgot we have our phone over internet and I cannot figure out how to set it all up.

Any ideas for my latest problem? I'd run back to the genius bar, but it's a ferry ride away and I'm not sure it would do any good to go back because all my phone "stuff" (cords, etc) wall jacks, is all here.

Current set up is this:

Modem box has ethernet (yellow) cable going from it to imac. It also has blue cable going from it to ATA Router (smaller black box). Each box (white larger "modem" box, and black smaller ATA Router) have a phone cord going from wall (2 separate jacks) to the box. And obviously each has it's own power cord.

I tried moving all plugs from white modem box to AP TC, but there really isn't a phone jack on back of APTC. It clicked in place in one of the <--> ports, but I'm getting a flashing amber light on the front, and no internet connection.

Any ideas for my latest issue?? I know so much more about computers than I ever wanted to know, but it obviously isn't enough. :)

Thanks!
 
lmrook said:
Okay . . . thank you for all the ideas . . . I tried them all to no avail (except the partition thing, because I had no idea what you were talking about).

I went ahead and made an appointment at the genius bar. They were able to save my data (I purchased an Airport Time Capsule), and reinstall Mavericks OS. I ended up getting the AirPort Time Capsule because of the modem capability. The modem we have from the phone company isn't very good.

Now I have a new problem. I forgot we have our phone over internet and I cannot figure out how to set it all up.

Any ideas for my latest problem? I'd run back to the genius bar, but it's a ferry ride away and I'm not sure it would do any good to go back because all my phone "stuff" (cords, etc) wall jacks, is all here.

Current set up is this:

Modem box has ethernet (yellow) cable going from it to imac. It also has blue cable going from it to ATA Router (smaller black box). Each box (white larger "modem" box, and black smaller ATA Router) have a phone cord going from wall (2 separate jacks) to the box. And obviously each has it's own power cord.

I tried moving all plugs from white modem box to AP TC, but there really isn't a phone jack on back of APTC. It clicked in place in one of the <--> ports, but I'm getting a flashing amber light on the front, and no internet connection.

Any ideas for my latest issue?? I know so much more about computers than I ever wanted to know, but it obviously isn't enough. :)

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Use a POTS splitter.
 
I sure appreciate the reply, but I would need much more information to understand what you are talking about. :rolleyes:
 
lmrook said:
Current set up is this:

Modem box has ethernet (yellow) cable going from it to imac. It also has blue cable going from it to ATA Router (smaller black box). Each box (white larger "modem" box, and black smaller ATA Router) have a phone cord going from wall (2 separate jacks) to the box. And obviously each has it's own power cord.
Click to expand...

Typically a VOIP ATA phone setup would be like this.

Internet modem ethernet cable out to Time Capsule (the jack closest to the power cord)... then a ethernet cable out of the TC to the Mac and another ethernet cable out of the TC to the ATA VOIP device.

Then a phone cable out of the ATA device into the wall to power the house phones.

Once this is all plugged in power down the modem and the router then plug the power back in so they recognize each other. Do the same for the ATA box.

Unless you have two, separate phone lines, there ordinarily would not be a second phone line.
 
Well, of course, we do have 2 lines. Your directions were pretty clear, thank you . . . but do you know how to do it with 2 lines? I will tell you the exact configuration at this time:

ATA Router Box: phone cord from wall jack to black ATA router. power cord from wall to ATA router. blue cord from ATA router to modem.

White Modem Box: phone cord from wall jack (different line) to modem. power cord from wall to modem. yellow cord from modem to imac. and of course, blue cord between ATA router and modem.

iMac: yellow cord from modem. power cord.

I now have an AirPort Time Capsule to insert into the mix. The genius bar gal told me to take the modem out of the configuration and use the AP TC instead. But I forgot we had our phone in the mix, so now I'm not sure how to do all this.

Thanks!
 
lmrook said:
Well, of course, we do have 2 lines. Your directions were pretty clear, thank you . . . but do you know how to do it with 2 lines? I will tell you the exact configuration at this time:

ATA Router Box: phone cord from wall jack to black ATA router. power cord from wall to ATA router. blue cord from ATA router to modem.

White Modem Box: phone cord from wall jack (different line) to modem. power cord from wall to modem. yellow cord from modem to imac. and of course, blue cord between ATA router and modem.

iMac: yellow cord from modem. power cord.

I now have an AirPort Time Capsule to insert into the mix. The genius bar gal told me to take the modem out of the configuration and use the AP TC instead. But I forgot we had our phone in the mix, so now I'm not sure how to do all this.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Okay... I think I understand what is going on. It sounds like you have a cable modem that has a ATA phone service combo built it. So that same modem provides you Internet service over the yellow ethernet cable and also phone service out to the phone jack in the wall.

Then in addition to that you have a second phone number going out over the Internet as a VOIP service using the second box.

So here is what you do. Let's start at the cable modem.

Leave the phone line from the cable modem to the wall in place. That will give you phone line #1.

Now take the yellow ethernet cable coming out of the white cable modem and plug it into the WAN port (closest to power line) in on the Time Capsule (TC).

Now take the blue ethernet cable coming out of the ATA VOIP box and plug it into one of the LAN jacks on the TC.

Now run a new cable from a LAN jack on the TC to the iMac.

Now unplug both the cable modem and the TC power then plug them both back in. When they both reboot you should be in business.

Sounds like that cable/phone modem is also a combo router, so you in effect will have two routers running one after the other. This will cause an "double NAT" message in Airport Utility for the TC. Ideally, you would want to get the cable modem combo box into what is called "bridge mode" so its internal router is bypassed. If you Google search your specific cable modem model number and "bridge mode" you can find instructions how to do that.

Or you can just dismiss the error message in Airport Utility and it will likely work fine.
 
Thank you so much for the detailed directions.

I did try it as written, but then my imac said there was no internet service. So, let me ask for clarification:

When you say remove the yellow ethernet cord from modem and put it into TC, do you mean the end that is going into the modem? Or the imac?

If i use the one from the modem, then later when you say to use a third cord between the imac and TC, there is not 2nd ethernet port on imac.

So, I did it moving the yellow one from the imac to the tc, then running new one from the tc to imac.

Perhaps I need to do the bridge thing first?

----------

Also, since there is an ethernet cable running between all things, do I turn the wifi off? Wifi seems to come on automatically, but I'm unclear if the wifi means the wifi the TC is giving out, or wifi coming into the computer.

----------

One more thing . . . I'm not sure what you mean by "cable modem". The modem and ATA router are both from the phone company to provide internet service and then spark (voip) phone.
 
lmrook said:
Thank you so much for the detailed directions.

I did try it as written, but then my imac said there was no internet service. So, let me ask for clarification:

When you say remove the yellow ethernet cord from modem and put it into TC, do you mean the end that is going into the modem? Or the imac?

If i use the one from the modem, then later when you say to use a third cord between the imac and TC, there is not 2nd ethernet port on imac.

So, I did it moving the yellow one from the imac to the tc, then running new one from the tc to imac.

Perhaps I need to do the bridge thing first?

----------

Also, since there is an ethernet cable running between all things, do I turn the wifi off? Wifi seems to come on automatically, but I'm unclear if the wifi means the wifi the TC is giving out, or wifi coming into the computer.

----------

One more thing . . . I'm not sure what you mean by "cable modem". The modem and ATA router are both from the phone company to provide internet service and then spark (voip) phone.
Click to expand...

Set is up like I laid it out in this highly professional drawing :cool:. Once you get it all hooked up, unplug (power plug) both the TC and the modem then plug them back in so they will recognize one another.

If you can't figure out how to bridge mode the modem, you can always bridge mode the TC. That might be easier for you. I mentioned cable modem because that is the most common usage of internet/phone combo modems like you have, so I assumed you had cable. Same principle either way though.

ejo24Zc.png


You can put the TC in bridge mode in this screen. If you don't need wifi at all, you can just turn it off on the TC in that wireless tab.

y4BIWMH.png
 
Last edited:
Okay . . . I've got it working. I called my internet provider (they are not usually very helpful with anything apple, but this time knew what to do), and they turned off the "wireless" signal from the comtrend box, and now everything is working well.

My teens will be running in to figure out why they aren't connected any more. Maybe I'll have to give out extra chores to earn the password to the new network.

Many thanks for your very detailed and complete directions! That ended up being the correct configuration. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back