Please help - iMac won't boot

[Nicola-J]

Can anybody please help? I tried to instal an Adobe Creative Cloud app yesterday, after trying a few times the install was keep failing so I restarted. Since then I cannot start my iMac. It keeps going to the Apple screen and the progress bar gets all the way to the end then it shuts down - I can't even get to the password screen. I have no idea what I'm doing but after Googling:

I have tried to boot in Safe mode but it doesn't work.

I can start up in Recovery mode. I have tried the disc repair option in disk utility using 'first aid' but I get the following error on osx: The volume osx could not be verified completely. File system check exit code 8. Updating boot support partitions for the volume as File system verify or repair failed. Operation failed ...

I have also tried to repair the disk in Single User Mode with fsck but I get the follwing error: disk 0s2: 1/O error The volume osx cannot be verified completely.

I have also tried to reinstall OS X from Recovery mode but when I select the disk to install OS X it won't let me restore because it says 'this disk is locked'.

Can anybody please help? I have not used Time Machine before and I have absolutely no back up of anything (I am an idiot) ....is there anyway to back up my data from OS X utilities please? I have no access to any other mac.
It was working perfectly until I tried to install Adobe Creative Cloud!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated because I an at a liss and worried about loosing all of my files.
Please help.
Many thanks, Nicola

 

[mzd]

wow, that is almost the same problem I am having. fortunately I have Time Machine backups. I had to reformat my harddrive to clear the Verify error (I'm still unable to boot though). But that will wipe out the drive. If you have an external drive that you can plug in, you may be able to copy your disk prior to reformatting it. It may not work if you can't mount the drive though.

 

[Nicola-J]

Thank you for your reply.
I don't have access to another mac and I don't have an external hard drive either.
I really don't want to lose my files (I feel sick at the thought) so I will buy an external drive. Do you know if there's a way I can tell if I can 'mount the drive'? Thanks Nicola

 

[rzc16512]

C

I have also tried to reinstall OS X from Recovery mode but when I select the disk to install OS X it won't let me restore because it says 'this disk is locked'.

Sounds like file vault is turned on...boot back into recovery mode. Open disk utility, click your hard drive (most likely Macintosh HD). Click File -> Unlock Drive. It will ask for the password. It should be your current password or a previous password you might've had. I would strongly suggest buying an external hard drive and start backing up with time machine. Very easy. Set it up once and you can forget about it unless you need to restore a file one day.

Edit: You might need to select "Turn off encryption" instead of "unlock drive" to be able to boot back up into OS X. However, I would try unlock drive first as disabling encryption could take quite a while.

 

[Nicola-J]

Thanks very much for your reply. This is really useful.
If anyone else is having this issue I booted single user mode and did a force fsck_hfs by running:
fsck_hfs -y -Rc -d /dev/disk0s2
This fixed 1 error. I still couldn't boot normally so I mounted the hd by running:
/sbin/mount -uw /
(again in single user mode). I can now boot normally and back up all of my info. Such a relief!!!
Here is the info: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/56461/repair-disk-from-single-user-mode-fsck-fails
Thanks for taking the time to reply

 

[Fredfredd]

Any help this is still not working for me my MacBook stops after saying repairing volume an one I type a command the (root#) entry never comes back

 

[Fishrrman]

Hope she got it fixed by now!