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Help! won't boot/can't reinstall!

flyfish29

flyfish29

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 4, 2003
2,175
4
New HAMpshire
My comptuer is useless right now- HELP!

It started a few weeks ago when I had some issues with a few folders in my Admin. account as noted in this thread here.
Basically I couldn't access the folders, etc. I was able to copy the folders to the desktop to back-up the data. Then, I tried to update to 10.4.5 and the update failed at the end.

So today I went to reinstall OSX. I chose Archive and Install option (should have done the other- I know) and the reinstall failed and it had me try the reinstall again. When I clicked restart it started up from the DVD fine. When I get to the "click installation disk" it shows nothing there!

I tried many things from the Utilities menu in the Installer including:

• select "start-up Disk" which only shows the Mac OSX DVD or network start-up with a ? on it. No hard drive option here.

• select "system profiler" which does work

• select "disk utility" and it shows my hard drive as a Toshiba, but below that is the name of my HD and that name is greyed out. I can select it, but the text is not dark like the other icons listed there. When First Aid is selected here it had Verify disk and repair disk as options. Under Erase it had everything as options. It also lists the Matshita CD/DVD combo drive and the OSX install DVD in the column on the left.

• I can open terminal ok.

What are my options here? I want to just start from scratch and reinstall everything. I have enough backed up that I am fine with erasing the whole drive- but don't know if I should do some first aid/repair stuff first, then erase, then install or what. HELP!

After solving this reinstall issue- if anyone has any thoughts as to what the heck went wrong in the first place- I don't install many extra programs- nothin- only mainstream ones like Office, etc. I installed nothing new recently either. The computer worked perfectly find except when trying to access those few folders which of course had all my created docs in them.

thanks for your time-
 
It's in Disk Utility, at the bottom when you've selected the drive.

It's not 100% accurate, but can be a good indication of a failed drive, or an advance warning of a drive that's going to fail.
 

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Yes, SMART status is verified. Everything else looks like yours minus the GB numbers, etc.

Two things- It took forever to get disk utility to come up with the drive info (1-2 minutes).

when I select the Icon and name of my hard drive "trout" at the bottom it says the following:
Mount point: Not mounted
Format: Mac OS Extended (JOurnaled)
Onwers enabled: -
Number of folders: -
Capacity: 55.8 BG
Available: -
Used: -
Number files: -

so missing this info can't be good- but what does all this say about my drive health though.

What is next step-

thanks again for your time
 
Oh yeah, when I was waiting for a response I just shut the lid to the ibook to put it to sleep. when I opened it the iBook was shut down for some reason. Can a computer that is booted up to a Install DVD be put to sleep this way or is this indicative of a problem?
 
Well, I Unmounted my external hard drive, and clicking on the grayed name of the unmounted drive yields the attached screen.

So that's not too unnatural. Is the Mount button grayed out when you've got your drive name selected?
 

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Download a program called "AppleJack." You must start up your computer in Single User mode, holding down the "Apple" key and "S" at the same time.

This is a program that is similar to fcsk, and will attempt to correct any types of HDD problems it can find. I will post the link to the program if I can find it.
 
no, it is nt grayed out- should I click that first?


<<<<Side note- I am not having problems with my iMac now! UGGG! I have not had issues with either of these for a year or more!! Anyway, I went in to repair disk permissions with disk utility on it and the DiskManagementTool died? It said Disk Utility needs to be restarted. I click OK and it said "do you really want to do this as it might make the disk unusable" I said no and it want back to trying to repair permissions. It didn't move for a while so i clicked the button to "stop permission repair" Now disk utility is not progressing anymore and is stuck. computer is working fine right now though. Below is the log and I will attach a screen shot too. What should I do for this?
**********
Mar 8 11:21:57: Disk Utility started.

Repairing permissions for “Chiefs”
Determining correct file permissions.
DiskManagementTool has died. Disk Utility will need to be restarted.

Stopped by user


Stopped by user
 

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spencecb said:
Download a program called "AppleJack." You must start up your computer in Single User mode, holding down the "Apple" key and "S" at the same time.
Click to expand...

so can I download the program in this Single User Mode? Hope so.

Should I mount the HD first? then do applejack?
 
Start from the DVD, use Disk Utility to erase the harddrive, do a clean install. Should work. ;)
 
flyfish29 said:
so can I download the program in this Single User Mode? Hope so.

Should I mount the HD first? then do applejack?
Click to expand...

You must be logged into OS X to download the program.

If you can not log into OS X, I'm not sure what to tell you. I guess your only option is to do a clean install of OS X and then I would suggest downloading the AppleJack program anyway. Run it and make sure there is nothing wrong with the HDD.
 
Ok, so I need to know how to proceed to do a clean install here. Do I need to mount the disk? do I just use erase in disk utility, then use installer to install since I can't get the disk to show up in the installer? Or will it show up once I mount it? It does have the option to verify and repair disk in first aid of disk utility when I select the named HD icon. should I do that first? confused.


Also, what the heck should I now do with my iMac (see above) I think I will wait to do anything until I get the iBook back up and running so I have one to use to access MacRumors! But I want to know what to do later today after I DO get my iBook fixed (thinking positively here!):D
 
Wait, please don't reinstall yet! I'm happy to see so many recommendations for AppleJack (one of my favorite utilities), but really it's only a handy script that runs fsck among other low-level utilities in single user mode. Before you do ANYTHING else, run fsck in single user mode! You don't need to install AppleJack to do this. If fsck doesn't repair your disk problems, I can recommend another step before your roll out the big artillery.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Wait, please don't reinstall yet! I'm happy to see so many recommendations for AppleJack (one of my favorite utilities), but really it's only a handy script that runs fsck among other low-level utilities in single user mode. Before you do ANYTHING else, run fsck in single user mode! You don't need to install AppleJack to do this. If fsck doesn't repair your disk problems, I can recommend another step before your roll out the big artillery.
Click to expand...

So I am getting so many different responses- I think I will wait a little while and try to get a consesus here.

I have heard of fsck but don't know how or what to do- please advise.

(By the way, for a while I always thought when I saw fsck it was someone trying to disguise a cuss word on the forums:D )
 
flyfish29 said:
So I am getting so many different responses- I think I will wait a little while and try to get a consesus here.

I have heard of fsck but don't know how or what to do- please advise.

(By the way, for a while I always thought when I saw fsck it was someone trying to disguise a cuss word on the forums:D )
Click to expand...

It's that too. ;)

Really, fsck is a UNIX disk repair utility. It's the one invoked by the Disk Utility application, but it can also be run in single user mode. This is easy, and should always be your first diagnostic/repair step. Reboot in single user mode (hold down cmd-s). When you see the prompt, type:

fsck -f [return] (the space before the -f is required!)

If the utility reports disk damage, and says it was repaired, or no damage, at the prompt, type:

reboot [return]

If it reports damage that wasn't repaired, run fsck again. Sometimes the second or third time is the charm. If you still have unrepaired damage, then you will need to escalate. But try this first.
 
Do I need to mount the disk on my iBook before doing the fsck in single user mode?



Any thoughts on my iMac and what I should do- I am worried I will have a problem with it too- I have left disk utility running (although it isn't progressing)
 
flyfish29 said:
Do I need to mount the disk on my iBook before doing the fsck in single user mode?



Any thoughts on my iMac and what I should do- I am worried I will have a problem with it too- I have left disk utility running (although it isn't progressing)
Click to expand...

The problem disk is the internal drive, correct? If so, the answer is no -- just reboot with cmd-s held down, and you'll enter single user mode.
 
Yes, drive was internat with DVD still in there- but internal drive is not mounted right now per above explaination.

So I did the fsck but the weird thing is it looks like it was checking the install DVD while doing this- not the hard drive. Here is what it said in the long list of typed things before I did the fsck -f command like you said:


It started with some stuff which I can't see right now, then I see several things talking about extensions like
"com.apple.driver.Apple02DBDMAAudio" has not kernal dependency "com.apple.AppleOnboard Display" has not kernal dependency
Firewire (OHCI Apple ID 31 built-in now active, GUID 001124ff feda3a0e; max speed s400.
adb present; 8c
security auditing service present
BSM auditing present
disabled
rooting via boot-uuid from /chosen;FED1E161-...(I can give more if needed)
Waiting on ,dict ID="0"><key>IOPORVIDERCLASS......(more)
Got boot device = IOService.....(more)
TA CD-RW CW-8124 MEDIA/IOApplePartition Scheme/Mac_OS_X@3
BSD root: disk1s3, major 14, minor 6
Mar8 13:15:41 Launched: ioctl(SIOCAIFADDR ipv6): file exists
singleuser boot -- fsck not done
Root device is mounted read only

If you want to make modifications to files:
/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /

If you wish to boot the system, but stay in single user mode:
sh /etc/rc

sssssssssssssss (I think I was still holding down cmd-s here)-sh-2.05b# fsck-f (I typed the fsck -f in this part and below is what came up)
** /dev/rdiskls3 (NO WRITE)
** Root file system
** checking hfs Plus volume
** checking Extents overflow file
list goes on checking... catalog file, multi-linked files, catalog hierachy, volume bitmap, bolume info.
The volume Mac OSC Install Disc 1 appears to be OK.



Obvously the install disk is still in there- This doesn't look like it did anything to check my HD. What do I do now. also, why the heck isn't my HD mounted- I didn't unmount it???????

Side note- no one has replied yet to what I should do about my iMac (see above post #11 from me) Basically the repair permissions in disk utility failed and is locked up- do I force quit, something else, what. Please respond to this request too= I am very stressed out that both computers are screwed up! Luckily I just finished a back-up of everything from the iMac too so I should be covered, but I don't have the time to reinstall both computers software, etc.

Help!
 
So I am holding strong resisting the temptation to do what I think needs to be done on both my computers until I hear from some "experts" from MacRumors...so please read and let me know what the heck I can do on both machines to help my situation.

On the iMac I was reading how I might need to remove some iTunes pkg's and such to be able to repair permissions correctly and I understand it all, except my error message is different than is listed on those three threads Here and Here and Here
I am running 10.3.9 and iTunes 6.0.3 which was referenced in one of the threads as supposedly fixing that DU problem. But as I
stated in an above post my error is different and is about disk utility failing- I don't remember the exact text except that it was different.

Help me with both my iBook and iMac issues!

I did play Powerball today since my day is going to crappy I figured you never know!
 
It seems you are booting from the install disk. Don't. You can boot into single user mode even if the hard drive won't boot your Mac (trust me, I went through this operation just yesterday).

Get that install disk out of the drive, and try it again.
 
Also, if you can't get the install DVD to eject, hold down the mouse button when you start the Mac until it ejects.

If your hard drive isn't mounting, then you might very well have directory damage, which could well be the source of all your problems. You can still run fsck on the drive, and it may well get repaired this way. Please do yourself a favor and don't escalate until you've tried fsck.
 
thanks- I will hold mouse button down to try and eject- it won't come out righ now- will let you know how it goes after I do this. so when I reboot do I just hold down power button or is there a way to tell it to reboot through the terminal looking text I am using right now being in single user mode??? I have to put my son down (sleep not down like an animal) then will do the above- but I don't want to do a hard restart if there is a way with the text stuff.

any thoughts on my other (iMac) issue? That error message made me really nervous that I would lose the use of my HD possibly. It said "do you really want to do this as it might make the disk unusable" in the error message (see post #11 above for those of you just joining in tonight!)

thanks so much for your help!
 
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