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Needing to Reinstall Leopard

M

mynameismatt89

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 19, 2005
276
0
Hello everyone

For the past few weeks I've been having some issues with my MacBook Pro. I've been experiencing a lot of freezing of my mac as well as not starting up when restarting it. I've done the whole Disk Utility thing, /sbin/fsck -fy thing and when I do the (/fsck -fy) I get all sorts of errors. Invalid Node Structure, The volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired, /dev/rdisk0s2 (hfs) EXITED WITH SIGNLA 8, disk0s2: I/O error, and so on. Right now I'm running /fsck -fy again (I'm typing this on my old iBook) and waiting to see if anything new comes up. I've tried booting from the installer cd and pressing 'c' but nothing comes up.

I have an important assignment due soon which requires me to use my computer for 18-20 hours a day until December the 3rd when it is due, so I can kind of need to get this problem out of the way...

I'm thinking of trying to erase and reinstall if I can boot from the installer cd and was also reading about using disk utility to erase my main start up volume and reformat in HFS+ (which is different from just erasing and reinstalling from installer cd's as erase maps out bad blocks on the Hard Drive to be excluded from use) I was wondering though, when I'm in disk utility on the installer cd and I'm erasing my main volume, once it is erased how do I go about reinstalling leopard and making sure everything is fixed? Is it as simple as restarting my MacBook using the installer cd and reinstalling or is there something more involved I have to do because I just erased the main volume?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to do this within the next few hours so I'd like to know whether I should erase and reinstall leopard or erase the volume and somehow (reformat?) and then reinstall.

Thanks,
Matt
 
reinstall

Just in case that there isn't any better answer within the next hours:

As far as I remember I had to erase a malfunctioning "dual boot" situation (OsX + Windows) by reinstalling OsX on my MacMini.
This works quite well if you know the keyboard combinations linked to the startup process (this included in my case one key on the IR remote control) ; the key combinations (using 'D' / 'O' etc.) should be described on webpages and docs/manuals.

Looking back at my windows time , reinstalling in a situation like yours is always more efficient than hassling around with a damaged file system.
 
For simplicity there is no need to erase a disk before installing OSX as there is a choice of installation types when you begin the installation process. The one you want to use is "Erase and Install" which takes care of your concern- it first erases the hard drive for a clean start and then proceeds to install OSX on it. That does by the way assume you do not have Boot Camp installed on your drive. If you do, then you do need to use the "Partition" tab in Disk Utility first to repartition the disk to only 1 partition. Again, not necessary if you do not have a Boot Camp partition.

You can check out installation notes in this support document by Apple.

I'm interested in your note that booting "from the installer cd and pressing 'c' but nothing comes up." Assuming you are pressing and holding "C" immediately after the startup chime (with the installer disk in the drive obviously and holding "C" until it is obvious that the system is booting from the CD) and nothing comes up that is a concern since you can only install booted from the DVD.

If you are doing that and it is not working, try the alternate method of starting from the DVD- that being to press and hold the "Option" key immediately after hearing the startup chime. In a few seconds, you should see a gray screen that shows all the bootable devices currently available, which in this case should be your hard drive and the DVD. Select the DVD and it should boot from it that way too.

There is a third way too- boot your Mac and open the DVD. In the window you should see an icon marked "Install OS X" or something like that- double clicking that should instruct your system to restart and boot automatically from the installer DVD.

Good luck!
 
Thanks for the help.

I ran /fsck -fy a few more times and it finally is saying Macintosh HD appears to be okay. I entered reboot and it was at a blue screen for awhile and then was hung on my background for about 5 minutes. I had to force shut it down as I could not open anything. I went into my windows partition, backed up my files, and when I rebooted into my OSX side It seemed to work enough for me to back everything up one final time using Time Machine, but everything is still performing very poorly. Once it is finishing backing up I will erase and reinstall.

So yes, I do have a Bootcamp partition. Should I go into Disk Utility now while it is in OSX rather than opening Disk Utility from the installer DVD? I suppose I could just go to Bootcamp setup assistant and unpartition. Is this the same as doing it through Disk Utility?

Thanks again for the help :)
 
OK- yes the Boot Camp Assistant should do fine and is probably the simplest way to kill the BC partition. Yes it does the same thing in the end that the Disk Utility's partition tab would.

(BTW- for future reference did you know that you can clone your whole BC partition to an image file with the cool little utility called WinClone? Then you don't even have to reinstall Windows- you just make a BC partition of the same size (or larger/smaller if you look at the FAQs on the WinClone site) and restore the working installation.)

Just in case something screws up in the Boot Camp Assistant, you can still repartiton the drive to a single partition in Disk Utility-- but it must be the DU on the installer disk since repartitioning that way will require the disk to be erased, so it won't work from the DU on your drive now.
 
I have yet to remove the BC partition. I will download WinClone and copy my partition. This saves me a lot of time so I won't have to reinstall all the programs on Windows. I'll install WinClone and clone it before I erase and reinstall Leopard.

Thanks.
 
If I clone it though, is it possible to copy some of the problems I've been having. I know if I were to Archive and Reinstall Leopard it's possible to transfer some of the problems over. Is this true for the windows partition too that could effect the Leopard side?
 
Anything is possible, but I personally wouldn't be overly concerned about that as the two OS installations are for all intents and purposes isolated from each other. If Windows has been operating ok on your system I would just go ahead and clone it and restore from that- on the Windows side only. It does indeed sound like your drive will benefit from a fresh install of OSX though!
 
You're right, Windows has been operating great (never thought I'd say that).

Still waiting for Time Machine to backup and then for WinClone to finish cloning my Windows partition.

Thanks for all your help SickMacDoc!
 
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