Disk Utility issues

[pianoman]

disclaimer: i'm not exactly sure if this belongs in the software section or the hardware section so i'll start here.

last night i decided to verify my hard drive in Disk Utility (for no other reason than curiosity). there was an issue (volume header needed repair, or something like that) and i fixed it by booting up from the DVD and repairing the hard disk through Disk Utility on the DVD. (i'm on a 15" CD MBP with 2GB RAM, OS X 10.4.8.) everything works great now.

when i told my friend about it this morning, he decided to verify his disk (he's on a 15" 1.67 PB with 1.5GB RAM, OS X 10.4.8). when he verified it, his computer locked up and he was forced to do a hard reboot. when he tried it again, he had the same problem.

any ideas what's causing his machine to lock up and any idea on how to fix it?

 

[bigandy]

was this running disk utility from the drive or the MacOS DVD?

 

[pianoman]

he was running Disk Utility from the drive. currently he doesn't have access to the DVDs but he could get them later today. is the only way to fix this to boot from the DVD and run Disk Utility that way?

 

[bigandy]

it could be. the problem with the hard drive may require the disk to be unmounted before disk utility can repair it, and that can't happen while booted in to MacOS.

keep us posted either way, and if it doesn't work still, i'm sure we'll be able to root out the issue

 

[pianoman]

he says he'll do it when he can get the DVDs.

i suggested booting from the DVDs when we first encountered the problem but since he didn't have them i thought someone might have a solution that doesn't require them.