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G5 Won't Save/Burn

Daveway

Daveway

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jul 10, 2004
3,370
1
New Orleans / Lafayette, La
I have a client who told me their G5 tower is not saving anything to the HD or burning disks. They haven't touched it since this started happening. They asked if they should buy Disk Warrior but I told them not to until I saw it.

Any idea what could be wrong?
 
I doubt anyone wants to speculate on a problem this bizarre. I'm not sure I believe the "won't save anything to disk" problem, as I've A) never seen anything like this troubleshooting the MacOS since version 6, and B) I'm not even sure that a standard OSX install will run if it can't write anything to disk (VM files, for example).

In any case, if they actually can't write to disk, it's probably a permissions issue--they're not an admin and perhaps the folder they're trying to write to ended up being owned by someone else.

As for the can't burn issue, this might be related to a bug in Tiger where some G5s (perhaps other Macs, too) will report a "drive not supported" error in the Finder when you put in a blank CD. The drive is supported, of course, and there's a workaround (I remember reading about it elsewhere, though I haven't actually tried it yet), but it's weird when you first see it.
 
Makosuke said:
As for the can't burn issue, this might be related to a bug in Tiger where some G5s (perhaps other Macs, too) will report a "drive not supported" error in the Finder when you put in a blank CD. The drive is supported, of course, and there's a workaround (I remember reading about it elsewhere, though I haven't actually tried it yet), but it's weird when you first see it.
Click to expand...

Does anyone know the workaround or where to find it? I'm running out of time.
:eek:
 
Daveway said:
Does anyone know the workaround or where to find it? I'm running out of time.
Click to expand...

How about some troubleshooting first?

Or are you looking for the troubleshooting steps too?
 
cubist said:
They logged in as the wrong user.
Click to expand...

I doubt it is that simple.
BTW is this the drive error, because I'm getting it also now.
 

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So, no user can write to disk? Or you're getting it logged in as them? Are the logs being written to disk? Have you run an fsck of the drive/disk utility? Got DW or TTP?
 
I've laid out my plan.

Boot from install disc
run fdisk
repair permissions

Launch Open Firmware
reset all rams

If that doesn't work then I'll use DiskWarrior to repair the directories. If DW doesn't work then I may reinstall the OS.
 
Daveway said:
I doubt it is that simple.
BTW is this the drive error, because I'm getting it also now.
Click to expand...
Mmkay, the "Drive not supported" error is COMPLETELY different from any problem they may be having writing data to the hard drive (though again, I have a feeling that half is a user error, not a computer problem).

The solution to the "Drive not supported" error, according to what I've read (I just now looked it up haven't tried myself yet) is to either force quit the Finder, which apparently resets something and causes it to start working again, or to reset the PRAM. I'm pretty sure MacFixIt said that there was a cache or plist file that needed deleting, but I can't remember what it was and apparently the force quit works just as well. If none of the above work, you could also try resetting NVRAM.

That's for the CDR problem; otherwise your troubleshooting list looks pretty good, though I'd be interested to hear if it's actually a disk problem and not user confusion on the HD front.
 
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