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Brother Michael

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 14, 2004
717
0
Alright here is the situation:

Shrike (my mac) has been running now for about 16 days straight (it has been put to sleep plenty of times though). I opened up my laptop and the OS just locked up. Nothing would work, not even the CMD + OPTION + ESC

So I did the only thing I know to do in a situation like this. I did a hard reboot (Held down the power button until the machine shut down). Let it sit for awhile and turned it back on.

It loaded up to the Apple Logo and is just sitting there with the status circle spinning.

What happened?

EDIT: OK, as soon as I hit submit, the OS X loading screen came up. But seriously what gives? Was it just doing a Scandisk or the like?
 
Does everything look OK now?

I'd repair permissions, etc. all of the routine stuff just as a precaution

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
sometimes, after a hard reboot, my powerbook takes extra time to load up. Im not entirely sure why though. Glad to hear everything seems to be ok.
 
that's why i always boot in verbose mode. when you shut down the machine after it locked up, it may have had to fsck the disk on reboot (depending on your os version).
 
jhu said:
that's why i always boot in verbose mode. when you shut down the machine after it locked up, it may have had to fsck the disk on reboot (depending on your os version).

That's just always sounded so dirty and vulgar to me :eek:

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
Pretty sure the OS automatically does some sort of check after a forced reboot, as it always takes longer for me. Since the filesystem should be journaled, it could be using that to reconstruct a clean state before continuing.
 
Makosuke said:
Pretty sure the OS automatically does some sort of check after a forced reboot, as it always takes longer for me. Since the filesystem should be journaled, it could be using that to reconstruct a clean state before continuing.

next time, boot in verbose mode to see what it's really doing. also, if your filesystem is journaled, it shouldn't take that long to make the filesystem clean.
 
jhu said:
next time, boot in verbose mode to see what it's really doing. also, if your filesystem is journaled, it shouldn't take that long to make the filesystem clean.

It can if it is replaying a ton of transactions. However, I think 10.4.3 is the main culprit of the slow booting. I should have just stuck with 10.3.
 
jhu said:
next time, boot in verbose mode to see what it's really doing. also, if your filesystem is journaled, it shouldn't take that long to make the filesystem clean.

How do I do that on the fly? I know there is a way to override the GUI loadup completely, but I am not interested in that.
 
Brother Michael said:
How do I do that on the fly? I know there is a way to override the GUI loadup completely, but I am not interested in that.
just press 'command-v' when the chime begins after a reboot. if you want to make it permanent you can type 'sudo nvram="0 bootr -v"' on the command-line.
 
iGary said:
My iBook sat on the Apple logo and "spinny thing" for like ten minutes when I went to 10.4.3 for what it's worth.

My PM did that...well, after 6-7 minutes I did a hard restart. It's fine now. I thought it had froze, but maybe it didn't.
 
So just an update here:

Shrike continues to die on me when I return it from sleep. Worse still, yesterday I turned on my computer to find that it couldn't find the startup folder. :eek:

After it did boot, I backed everything up and reinstalled OS X.

It still crashes when I wake it from sleep.

Is my hard drive dying?
 
Brother Michael said:
So just an update here:

Shrike continues to die on me when I return it from sleep. Worse still, yesterday I turned on my computer to find that it couldn't find the startup folder. :eek:

After it did boot, I backed everything up and reinstalled OS X.

It still crashes when I wake it from sleep.

Is my hard drive dying?

Check it with Disk Utility ( and make sure when your HD is selected it says 'S.M.A.R.T. Status : Verified' at the bottom of the Disk Utility screen) Doesn't sound good though
 
Sounds like it might be. Have you noticed any clicking sounds from the HD area when the machine locks up? I'd say do the check, and keep that backup current for as long as possible. Sounds like the first stages of HD death.
 
+++++++++++++++++++++

Verifying volume “Shrike HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Shrike HD appears to be OK.
Mounting Disk

1 HFS volume checked
Volume passed verification

++++++++++++++++++++++

:confused:
 
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