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I've made a huge error & desperately need help!

R

robbyrichmond

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 15, 2010
2
0
Hi everyone
Im pretty new to macs and dont really know what i'm doing with them.

I've inherited my brothers imac and it's running mac osx 10.5.8 i think, i cant really be sure as ive done something really really stupid.

The mac runs both windows and mac osx and that takes up loads of space on the hard drive and i was told to try and clean up the drive using a program called clean my mac. I did this successfully but i still needed more space to install Final cut studio. A friend recommended that i try and delete or remove additional languages i dont use, hindu, swedish etc. I ran a program called indiscribe, something like that, and it removed a load of languages.

However, it seems to have also deleted a load of the english languages like english (US) that it would appear are critical to the running of the mac.
later that evening i turned my mac off as usual and when i went ot turn it on in the morning i couldnt and still can get it to log in or load up.
the classic white page with the grey apple logo appears, with a spinning jobby thing and then it goes to a blue page. which wont allow any of the buttons i press on the keyboard to log me or bascially do anything.

is there anything i can do?

also if there is, is there a way to disinstall the windows hard drive thingy, that takes up over 100 gigs of space?

i truly hope someone can help as im completely stuffed and have no idea what the dickens im doing!
many thanks in advance
Rob
 
I think if you start up from the OS DVD (it came with the machine, start the computer up with the disc in the drive and the "C" letter pressed until it loads; if it doesn't work use the Option ("Alt") key instead) and install the system again not doing a clean install, but installing the system again on top, you should be fine. Be cautious (better to take your time than do something you don't know the consequences of); I'll check back tomorrow to see if you need further help. Good luck.
 
Commenter said:
I think if you start up from the OS DVD (it came with the machine, start the computer up with the disc in the drive and the "C" letter pressed until it loads; if it doesn't work use the Option ("Alt") key instead) and install the system again not doing a clean install, but installing the system again on top, you should be fine. Be cautious (better to take your time than do something you don't know the consequences of); I'll check back tomorrow to see if you need further help. Good luck.
Click to expand...

i agree fresh install is best, note you'll lose everything on the machine bu will allow you to make it yours, register it and enjoy it as if new
 
I don't suppose you have the original installation disks? I don't know of a way to fix this - other than reinstalling OS X. Won't take that long, and you'll get nice clean system that way.

If you don't have the disks, you can purchase OS X for fairly cheap from any number of stores.

Good Luck.
 
I'm not familiar with the program you used to delete unused language translations, but I've heard of those causing problems in the past, and the symptom you're seeing could well be from it removing files it shouldn't have.

Assuming that's the case (or, really, even if it's not), you're pretty much in a "you should install a fresh copy of the OS" territory. This would also have the benefit of removing any old files/applications you didn't need, you can deselect the languages you won't use at the time of the install (which you know for certain isn't going to hurt anything), and you can skip the installation of a bunch of printer drivers you'll probably never use, which is another 1-2GB of space. PLUS, while you're at it, you can remove the Bootcamp partition that Windows is on, to get a completely fresh start, since it sounds like you don't plan on using that, either.

So: Did your brother give you the OS install disc that came with the computer? Depending on the age that may or not be 10.5, but either way you can use it to completely erase the drive and reinstall the OS from the start.

Alternately, if the computer is new enough to be an Intel Mac (what particular Mac is it?) you could invest a mere $20 in a copy of Snow Leopard, which I'd recommend anyway, and will let you erase and reinstall from scratch.

The actual process is quite simple once you have an OS disc. There are many threads explaining how to reformat the drive and reinstall the OS here, or you can post with the specific model you have and what OS version you're installing, and someone will be able to help with more specific instructions.
 
I guess I wasn't very clear: I meant do not perform a clean install, as I assume you wish to preserve the contents of the system ('cause otherwise no offense (or "offence" for ye brits) but it's kinda obvious, guy). If you don't care about the contents (or they're backed up or whatever), start up from the DVD, in the menus at the top go to Tools (I think) > Disk Utility and erase the drive (completely—that should also get rid of the Windows (ew) partition), and then Quit Disk Utility and do a clean install. That's nicest, but again, do not do a clean install if you care at all about (and can't otherwise replace) any of the software contents of the machine.
 
It appears you've ****ed things up.

Re-Install OSX. If you don't have the disks, Snow Leopard is $35.

External hard drives are also cheap. You should consider one.
 
Commenter said:
I guess I wasn't very clear: I meant do not perform a clean install, as I assume you wish to preserve the contents of the system ('cause otherwise no offense (or "offence" for ye brits) but it's kinda obvious, guy). If you don't care about the contents (or they're backed up or whatever), start up from the DVD, in the menus at the top go to Tools (I think) > Disk Utility and erase the drive (completely—that should also get rid of the Windows (ew) partition), and then Quit Disk Utility and do a clean install. That's nicest, but again, do not do a clean install if you care at all about (and can't otherwise replace) any of the software contents of the machine.
Click to expand...

sorry i read that wrong, didnt know you could reinstall without it being a fresh install

Capt Underpants said:
It appears you've ****ed things up.

Re-Install OSX. If you don't have the disks, Snow Leopard is $35.

External hard drives are also cheap. You should consider one.
Click to expand...

i wonder if snow leopard upgrade might reinstall the language packs uninstalled in first place, long shot but might work
 
Startup discs

Use the discs that came with the mac, make sure you read what the instructions say, and go gently step by strp so that you don't end up erasing everything. Good luck
 
thanks for the help guys, i really aprricate it.
suffice to say i dont have the install disks a friend has given me the mac osx 10.6.2 and that doesnt seem to work, but i really dont know what im doing.

my mac is a 20" from 2008, so i think thats os x 10.5.6 leopard.

I will have to search one out!

will i be able to remove all the windows stuff?
thanks again guys
 
The disc you have that contains 10.6.2 should work. When you boot your Mac - hold down the Alt key - hold it until you see a bootscreen with the Windows partition and the Mac HD.

Insert the OS X disc and choose to boot from it. If everything goes according to plan then the Snow Leopard installation should commence in a few minutes.

I'm certain that your Mac can load Snow Leopard.

When you are in the installation screen just follow the prompts and install on top of the current installation which is faulty.

When OS X is loaded up again you can use BootCamp Assistant to remove the Windows partition.
 
If there is an Apple Authorized Reseller or Apple Retail Store near you, go pay them a visit and grab the retail Snow Leopard 10.6.3 disc. It's only $29, and you'll have a much higher chance of restoring your Mac to a usable state with it.
 
robbyrichmond said:
thanks for the help guys, i really aprricate it.
suffice to say i dont have the install disks a friend has given me the mac osx 10.6.2 and that doesnt seem to work, but i really dont know what im doing.

my mac is a 20" from 2008, so i think thats os x 10.5.6 leopard.

I will have to search one out!

will i be able to remove all the windows stuff?
thanks again guys
Click to expand...

If the disc is grey than it is a disc that came with your friends Mac. Those are machine specific and will not work in your iMac.
 
have you tried booting into safe mode? target disk mode?

it may not help at all, but its well worth a shot and simple to do:

the simplest way - while the mac is shutdown, hold down the shift key while the mac is booting, continue holding down the shift key AT LEAST until you see the spinning disks under the grey apple logo (you can continue to hold it for longer to be sure)

if it does boot into safe mode (it will take much longer to boot than normal) you can at least rescue and offload your data to an external hard drive and troubleshoot/ reinstall from there

you should also be able to boot the mac into target disk mode and offload to another mac before you reinstall

also, have you used final cut pro before? fcp needs LOTS of free space on the hard drive for scratch space even if you're using it for short web movies (you can designate an external hard drive for fcp's scratch space, but you'll notice a speed hit especially on rendering)

fwiw, until recently, my 1st gen white macbook had only a 120gb hard drive running 10.4.11, with final cut pro suite, adobe cs2 suite, parallels 2 w/ 10 guest OSes on it and it ran ok - most of the time what fills up a hard drive faster than anything else are music, movies and photos which are easily offloaded to an external hard drive for space - its better than tooling around your mac and incrementally freeing up hard drive space by deleting additional languages, printer drivers, etc.
 
Save your data, if needed - then clean install

Your system is goofed-up and not worth preserving. I would strongly recommend to follow the various advices above to save the data needed, then clear the disk and do a clean install of Snow Leopard. You will be rewarded later for the extra time and effort spent now by a clean running system.

If you can get / loan an external disk with a capacity of at least slightly more than the space currently used on your hard disk, and which can be totally re-initialized with a Mac filesystem (use journaled hfs+), you can use carbon copy (see http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7032/carbon-copy-cloner ) to make an identical copy of your current drive before the (clean) new install. You can later mount that copy and pull over whatever you need.

Good luck!
 
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