First Aid Failed!!!!!! Need advice!

[onthat]

So when I started my pbook today, it took somewhere along the lines of 5 minutes before I could access any applications...So I went to run Onyx and did the best I could do with it, restarted and just as before it drug it's feet. So I went through disk utility and ran first aid...which failed. All I'm seeing is:
Illegal Name
The Volume HDD needs to be repaired
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Volume needs repair

What do I do now?

 

[mkrishnan]

Did you run Disk Utility off the Install DVD or after booting off the HD? If the latter, boot off the install disc and run Disk Utility from there, and then do Repair Disk (you'll notice this option is always grayed out if you're running off of the HD).

 

[onthat]

How do I go about booting off the install disc?

 

[Nermal]

Put the disk in and select it from the Startup Disk preference pane.

 

[calebjohnston]

I believe you can also just put the CD in, restart, and hold C as it turns on.

 

[mkrishnan]

I believe you can also just put the CD in, restart, and hold C as it turns on.

Yeah, although, for some reason, this doesn't seem to work on every single Mac. When I upgraded my iBook to Tiger, this drove me *crazy*. I couldn't get any of the ways that were supposed to make the computer boot off disc work, until I did it via sys prefs. I think that's the way that's closest to 100% likely to work. But I have no idea why.

 

[Nermal]

You think that's bad? Try my PM G3! The only way I could manage to get it to boot from the Jaguar CD is with XPostFacto - holding C, selecting Startup Disk, or running the Installer from inside OS 9 all failed.

 

[EricNau]

Yeah, although, for some reason, this doesn't seem to work on every single Mac. When I upgraded my iBook to Tiger, this drove me *crazy*. I couldn't get any of the ways that were supposed to make the computer boot off disc work, until I did it via sys prefs. I think that's the way that's closest to 100% likely to work. But I have no idea why.

I'm running Tiger and holding C after restart booted just fine from the Tiger disk.

Isn't it kinda funny; you hold "C" for "CD" and they aren't even CDs anymore. (OK, not really that funny, just ironic)

 

[mkrishnan]

I'm running Tiger and holding C after restart booted just fine from the Tiger disk.

I don't think it's Tiger. I think it was my iBook. But I don't understand what the pattern is. Most people had no problem with this, but a good handful did. And this is *booting* off a disc -- so nothing I could've changed, should've affected it!

 

[flashronin]

Help please

Did you run Disk Utility off the Install DVD or after booting off the HD? If the latter, boot off the install disc and run Disk Utility from there, and then do Repair Disk (you'll notice this option is always grayed out if you're running off of the HD).

I attempted the advice on this forum (restarting, with C depressed) - This starts the process of installing OS X again, I rode it out until it asked if I wanted to take all of my settings and put them elsewhere. To be honest, I got spooked and decided to cancel. Should I have continued, to be able to run the repair disk? If I just open the boot disk and attempt to run the disk util, I get 'You cannot open the application "Disk First Aid" because it may be damaged or incomplete.

Any ideas?

 

[rockandrule]

I have the same problem with my PowerBook (the failure line only though). I was wondering what was up. I'll have to try this in a little.

 

[mkrishnan]

I attempted the advice on this forum (restarting, with C depressed) - This starts the process of installing OS X again, I rode it out until it asked if I wanted to take all of my settings and put them elsewhere. To be honest, I got spooked and decided to cancel. Should I have continued, to be able to run the repair disk? If I just open the boot disk and attempt to run the disk util, I get 'You cannot open the application "Disk First Aid" because it may be damaged or incomplete.

No, you went too far and missed it. When you get to the very first screen of the installation process after booting from the DVD, you should also see menus in the menu bar. One of them will let you do things besides installing, such as running Disk Utility. You must be BOOTED off the DVD though -- you cannot just put it in and run it off the disc while you're booted off the HD. The whole point is that you cannot be booted off the HD and repair it at the same time....

Try again and if you still have trouble, let us know.