Weird problems in os x 10.6

[jiE]

Hi. I am having several problems with my macbook pro classic.
Im running 10.6.1.
When i start the computer and the grey screen comes up with the apple logo etc., a grey "loading" bar has started appearing in the bottom of the screen. Takes a few minutes for it to go away. In the meantime the computer gets very hot and the fans are up to 6000 rpm. Then the os starts up, and I cannot download anything, due to the fact that it thinks my harddrive is full, though i have more than 100 gb of free space.
I cannot open word because it says im out of memory. A quick look in istat pro will tell me that i have 1,33 gb of free memory available. Every task that requires memory gives me an error..
This morning i tried installing the 10.6.2 but i failed halfway through. then the memory issues started.
I cant even download the 10.6.2 now due to the harddrive appears to be full..
Backup and reinstall, only option?

 

[jiE]

tried to do a repair of the mac hd with a mac os x install disc, but it failed. I ended up with doing a backup and reinstall, now working perfect again.

 

[Makosuke]

For reference, the bar was the MacOS doing a disk check, because something had gotten corrupted (as you figured out), and rather badly.

Your solution was the correct one, though I would keep a close eye for anything else odd, and make sure you maintain good backups--it may have just been freak data corruption, but there's a chance the hard drive is dying and that's what caused things to go awry.

Also educational for me, as you confirmed that 10.6 shows a progress bar while it's attempting a disk check at boot, as I'd guessed based on another question here. That wasn't the case through 10.5 and I haven't been unlucky enough to see it myself thus far.