Need help asap

[rm2092]

Ill start first with that my MBP is 3 years old no real problems, so today I was dragging some large file pics to the trash and I got the long spinning wheel so I just hit the shut down button and the turn back on and thats were the fun starts. It buts back up and I get like a install bar on the white screen under the Apple logo, it fill up 1/4 ways then the spinning thing under the Apple logo again and then after 5 min or so it loads up. Time to put my password in to log in and now its blocking my password after several attemps. I shut it down and try again now, and now after 20 min im still at the white screen with the Apple logo and the little thing is just spinning so I'm I screwed ????

 

[blueroom]

Need help asap

320 posts later and that's the best title you could come up with?

Anyway sounds like your HD is failing.

 

[Mal]

The bar you described indicates that it's performing a file system check, which it does in certain cases if it detects that there may be a problem. Combined with the rest of the issues, I concur that the hard drive is probably beginning to fail.

If you're running Lion, try holding down Command-R and running Disk Utility from the Recovery Partition (or Internet Recovery, whichever your machine ends up booting to). If you're running an earlier OS, then pull out your original install disk and hold Option to boot from it, then run Disk Utility from there.

BTW, despite the somewhat rude way in which you were told, putting a more specific title will make it more likely that the people who have knowledge on how to help you will choose to read your thread. If you want to edit your title now, just click on the Edit button in the bottom right corner of your original post, then change the title at the top and click the Save button.

jW

 

[chilly7]

As i saw this title, that was a first topic i clicked on, because if sombody needs help we need to help that person even if it might not be that easy...

p.s. the topic title if perfect for me

 

[Mojo1]

I wouldn't assume that the internal drive is failing based on the symptoms.

A few weeks ago I hosed my Lion system via some imprudent keyboard inputs while the MBP was starting up/shutting down. I frankly do not recall all the details but it was the first time anything like it happened to me in 15+ years.

The MBP would not start up the first few times I tried but finally it did, albeit with some worrisome symptoms.

I did a reinstall of Lion that took around 3 hours via the online process. Long story short: it fixed the problems and no data was lost.

I would try reinstalling the system. If you want to check the health of the drive you can do it before you go to the trouble of installing the OS. You may be able to fix the problem without having to resort to reinstalling the OS.

 

[rm2092]

Thanks for the help, I did get into the disk utilities and that was a no go so the end result was to reinstall Lion via the Internet but that fail because it said the disk was locked ? I ended up doing a erase of the disk and now I'm able to re install lion wich will take around 5 hours so now im at work and hope all is ok when I get home and I guess I lost all my pics and so on ?

 

[Mojo1]

It's too bad that you didn't wait before taking such a drastic step since it sounds like you don't have a recent backup of your files.

Some of your old files may be recoverable using appropriate software. Success depends on how you erased the drive and to what extent the files were over-written when Lion was reinstalled.

If you don't have a backup plan you have learned an important lesson. Buy an external drive and create a bootable "clone" of your MBP drive. (I prefer SuperDuper! for its ease-of-use, reliability and the fast/excellent support provided by its developer.) Then regularly backup your MBP.

If you had had a bootable clone of your MBP you would have been able to startup your Mac using the external drive and attempted to repair the MBP drive. If the MBP drive was not repairable you could run the MBP off the external drive until you had the MBP repaired.