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Startup hell: blue screen/grey apple/no love...help?!

V

viborg

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 21, 2007
16
0
Well, a few days ago my iBook G4 crashed completely (as in "froze up") and when I restarted, all I got to was the blue screen. I've tried zapping the PRAM, the NVRAM, tried fsck, all to no avail. I can get to open firmware, and I can get to single-user mode, but NOT to safe mode. When I try to archive and install from the DVD, at this point there is nothing in the space provided for destination volume (no image appears).

I had some problems (but nothing major) in the past: when starting up, my computer would lag a long time on the grey screen, and this seemed to have something to do with my CD/DVD drive, because the drive would have disappeared before this would happen then would reappear afterwards.

Now, at some points since the crash, I have been able to log into my normal user account, but eventually the system again completely freezes up. I also noticed that sometimes when in single user mode, I get an error message about no kernel dependencies (but not always). This typically occurs after the computer has been powered down for a while. At one point, all that I could get to was a screen that said "Darwin/BSD (deep.local) (console)", and a login message. I was able to login from there. Also, when running fsck, I frequently get an error message about "invalid volume file count". And one last thing: I tried to start with verbose mode, and there was another message about "invalid directory item count".

I really don't want to wipe this drive if I don't have to, and at this point I'm not even sure how, if I did want to. In my extensive googling to solve this issue, I have read about deleting the kext cache, but couldn't find how to do it, or if it would help. I also read that DiskWarrior is a good bet for disk repair. Is that right?

Any help is much appreciated!
 
Oh yeah...

I forgot to mention what I was doing before the crash. Heh. I left a p2p running overnight that filled up my hard drive to the brim. Maybe that had something to do with the crash. Anyway, thanks!
 
If your hard drive is completely full that might be causing this issue. At the console prompt what result do you get if you type "df -h"? Is the drive 100% full? Do you know enough commands to try deleting some of the large p2p files you may have downloaded to see if that works?
 
Thanks...

Thanks, Dr. Iha. I was actually able to free up some disk space one time when I could log in, so it's now at 86% capacity.
 
The catalog structure on your hard drive is b0rked by the sounds of it, or you have a hardware failure on the hard drive, or both.

Run Disk Utility from your OS CD. Can you Repair Disk?
Get a Techtool Pro or DiskWarrior CD. Can you Rebuild directories?
If not,
Take the drive out of the machine, put it in an external case and recover data to another Mac.
Reformat or replace the drive.
 
CanadaRAM said:
The catalog structure on your hard drive is b0rked by the sounds of it, or you have a hardware failure on the hard drive, or both.

Run Disk Utility from your OS CD. Can you Repair Disk?
Get a Techtool Pro or DiskWarrior CD. Can you Rebuild directories?
If not,
Take the drive out of the machine, put it in an external case and recover data to another Mac.
Reformat or replace the drive.
Click to expand...

I totally concur with this advice. I'd bet on a corrupted directory on your hard drive, and also that Disk Warrior (haven't got any experience with Techtool) would fix it.

One addition: If the drive directory is corrupted, then an external drive enclosure isn't going to be of much help, because it still won't mount. If the drive directory is not corrupted, then it isn't necessary -- target disk mode would be a simpler solution.
 
I was able to run Disk Utility from the install disk to repair the disk today, but then I tried to archive and install and it just froze up again. I think you nailed it with the catalog structure diagnosis. I've been running fsck frequently, and when it does find errors its generally in the catalog hierarchy. It sounds like TechTool is the way to go for me. Will this determine if my drive directory is corrupted? You kind of lost me with the "target disk mode" comment...time for more googling? Thanks!
 
-viborg

Disk utility and fsck only get you so far. If you have an actual Volumenr Directory mismatch - you have a true b0rking.

Only a heavy-duty directory repair can solve this, ergo the Diskwarrior and Techtool mentions. Personally, I'd like to recommend the Techtool Protege as it is all you need on a bootable thumb drive.

Oh, and Traget Disck Mode is a handy little bit of magic as it turns the computer you invoke it on into a glorified driveset. Meaning, by default, the HD within the computer is available to others as an external HD via a firewire connection. But, if you were to plug another HD into that computer, or pop a disk into the optical drive, that too will become available to the master computer.

This is a handy was to install DVD-based software on a machine with no DVD drive BTW.
 
I love my new MacBook....

Heh. Yeah, I tried TechTool, Diskwarrior, etc. Nothing seemed to solve my problem, so I bought a new MacBook, and per your suggestions linked the old iBook in Target Disk mode to get as much as I could off it. I lost my iTunes Library and iTunes Music Library.xml files, though- what a pain in the bootah! Never mind that...I completely erased my old iBook using Erase Disk from Disk Utility on my new laptop. I think I may have even erased the Open Firmware, and now I'm hoping theres some way to restore the OS. How can I put a new Open Firmware on there while its in Target Disk mode, or do you have any other suggestions? Thanks again!!!
 
You can't erase OpenFirmware, since it is not on the drive but in the boot ROM.

Second, it would be useful to know what if any repairs were reported by Disk Warrior or TechTool.
 
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