Mac started acting real slow, so I did a restart. After a long wait, a folder with a question mark shows up. Dead disc? Time for posthumous apple care?
Question mark means it can't find a bootable OS. On the plus side if it gets that far it's not a hardware problem (well, aside from maybe a dead hard drive.)
If you have the original system disc (or the 'restore' disc will work as well,) put that disc in and restart your Mac while holding down the 'c' key to force it to boot from the CD (DVD) drive. On the first screen select 'Disc Utility' from the Apple menu (i.e., don't click continue.) In Disc Utility select the First Aid tab, then select the internal hard drive and click 'repair'. This might be able to fix it.
If it still doesn't boot shut it down. Press and hold this awkward 4 key combo: command-option-p-r and boot up again. Keep holding these 4 keys down until you've heard the initial startup "bong" sound 3 times. After the 3rd time let those keys go and see if it starts up from there. This is clearing your pram (parameter RAM) where some base settings are held.
If that doesn't work and you still want to keep trying yourself, get a hold of a copy of Disc Warrior and boot off that and let it run it's dark magic. I've seen Disc Warrior fix lots of systems that seemed beyond repair. But you need to have the disc.
On the other hand, the slow down you were experiencing before this does lead one to believe that your disc was failing. Hopefully that isn't the case though.
Good luck. Keep us posted.
disc warrior saved me once
Thanks for the tips. Just got around to attacking this.
Currently, "Repair Disk" fails because the drive can not be unmounted. I'm beginning to suspect HW failure.
I'm gonna try the terminal window utility to see if I can back up a few files. Just about everything is backed up.
The shell command dd can be your friend. But heed the warning:
Warning!! If you reverse the source and target, you can wipe out a lot of data. This feature has inspired the nickname "dd" Data Destroyer.
We've had that problem at work. Usually someone in a hurry.
I don't have a blank target. I thought about copying a disk image (.dmg ?), but it wouldn't work.
I'm trying to get to and copy files but my linux skliz are teh big time sux.
If I continue to fail, next step is to try dd or "restore" using the disk utility. I probably need to drive to an actual city to buy an external drive. The only mac friendly drive I have is my backup drive.
Well double u to the tee to the eff ...
I couldn't mount the drive from the command line, so I went to the disk utility (which couldn't unmount), and for grins I hit repair. It's trying.
You wouldn't be able to mount it from the command line if it's already mounted.
Do you have a program open that has a file open that is on the drive? Are you sure? Have you logged out and back in?
Whether it's mountable or not varies ... a lot. When I was trying to mount it from the command line, it wasn't mounted yet. I've got a repair attempt running again (previous failed).
I'm fixing to head over the hill to go to Fry's to pick up Disk Warrior and a fresh external drive.
In the middle of all this, the file system on my Windows laptop came up corrupted. XP was able to do a repair. Someone's trying to tell me to be more religious about backups.
Disk repair "worked" but disk is still fubar. I got as far as using the cp command to copy some files, but got I/O errors.
Now I'm trying to get the dang OS X disk out of the optical drive. I'm hoping reboot holding the mouse button will work. Remember the old paper clip trick on the first Mac?
Got diskwarrior. I'm gonna try a backup first, and then a rebuild.
While there, I asked about replacing the HD with a bigger drive. I was told a) I can't get a kit from them to replace a drive, I have to have them do it, and b) larger disks are unauthorized and will void the warranty. Is this for reals?
Diskwarrior did its thing. Definitely a HW failure. I was able to recover a couple things. I lost some work-in-progress on some video editing. I've been pretty paranoid about making multiple backups of the video source files, so nothing lost there. (I still have two-three copies of everything.)
Dropped off the Mac at the G. Bar for repair. G. Bar Dude says I could use a certified 3rd party to go to a bigger disk. Whatever size I get will be too small, so I don't think I'll bother. 500 GB drives that power off USB or Firewire can handle the overflow.
I'll probably do the Parallels thing when I get it back.
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- mark 5-21-2009 11:22 am
Question mark means it can't find a bootable OS. On the plus side if it gets that far it's not a hardware problem (well, aside from maybe a dead hard drive.)
If you have the original system disc (or the 'restore' disc will work as well,) put that disc in and restart your Mac while holding down the 'c' key to force it to boot from the CD (DVD) drive. On the first screen select 'Disc Utility' from the Apple menu (i.e., don't click continue.) In Disc Utility select the First Aid tab, then select the internal hard drive and click 'repair'. This might be able to fix it.
If it still doesn't boot shut it down. Press and hold this awkward 4 key combo: command-option-p-r and boot up again. Keep holding these 4 keys down until you've heard the initial startup "bong" sound 3 times. After the 3rd time let those keys go and see if it starts up from there. This is clearing your pram (parameter RAM) where some base settings are held.
If that doesn't work and you still want to keep trying yourself, get a hold of a copy of Disc Warrior and boot off that and let it run it's dark magic. I've seen Disc Warrior fix lots of systems that seemed beyond repair. But you need to have the disc.
On the other hand, the slow down you were experiencing before this does lead one to believe that your disc was failing. Hopefully that isn't the case though.
Good luck. Keep us posted.
- jim 5-21-2009 2:09 pm [add a comment]
disc warrior saved me once
- steve 5-21-2009 6:08 pm [add a comment]
Thanks for the tips. Just got around to attacking this.
Currently, "Repair Disk" fails because the drive can not be unmounted. I'm beginning to suspect HW failure.
I'm gonna try the terminal window utility to see if I can back up a few files. Just about everything is backed up.
- mark 6-06-2009 10:32 pm [add a comment]
The shell command dd can be your friend. But heed the warning:
Warning!! If you reverse the source and target, you can wipe out a lot of data. This feature has inspired the nickname "dd" Data Destroyer.
- jim 6-06-2009 10:47 pm [add a comment]
We've had that problem at work. Usually someone in a hurry.
I don't have a blank target. I thought about copying a disk image (.dmg ?), but it wouldn't work.
I'm trying to get to and copy files but my linux skliz are teh big time sux.
If I continue to fail, next step is to try dd or "restore" using the disk utility. I probably need to drive to an actual city to buy an external drive. The only mac friendly drive I have is my backup drive.
- mark 6-06-2009 11:17 pm [add a comment]
Well double u to the tee to the eff ...
I couldn't mount the drive from the command line, so I went to the disk utility (which couldn't unmount), and for grins I hit repair. It's trying.
- mark 6-06-2009 11:21 pm [add a comment]
You wouldn't be able to mount it from the command line if it's already mounted.
Do you have a program open that has a file open that is on the drive? Are you sure? Have you logged out and back in?
- jim 6-07-2009 12:42 am [add a comment]
Whether it's mountable or not varies ... a lot. When I was trying to mount it from the command line, it wasn't mounted yet. I've got a repair attempt running again (previous failed).
I'm fixing to head over the hill to go to Fry's to pick up Disk Warrior and a fresh external drive.
In the middle of all this, the file system on my Windows laptop came up corrupted. XP was able to do a repair. Someone's trying to tell me to be more religious about backups.
- mark 6-07-2009 12:51 am [add a comment]
Disk repair "worked" but disk is still fubar. I got as far as using the cp command to copy some files, but got I/O errors.
Now I'm trying to get the dang OS X disk out of the optical drive. I'm hoping reboot holding the mouse button will work. Remember the old paper clip trick on the first Mac?
- mark 6-07-2009 2:54 am [add a comment]
Got diskwarrior. I'm gonna try a backup first, and then a rebuild.
While there, I asked about replacing the HD with a bigger drive. I was told a) I can't get a kit from them to replace a drive, I have to have them do it, and b) larger disks are unauthorized and will void the warranty. Is this for reals?
- mark 6-07-2009 6:52 am [add a comment]
Diskwarrior did its thing. Definitely a HW failure. I was able to recover a couple things. I lost some work-in-progress on some video editing. I've been pretty paranoid about making multiple backups of the video source files, so nothing lost there. (I still have two-three copies of everything.)
- mark 6-07-2009 6:15 pm [add a comment]
Dropped off the Mac at the G. Bar for repair. G. Bar Dude says I could use a certified 3rd party to go to a bigger disk. Whatever size I get will be too small, so I don't think I'll bother. 500 GB drives that power off USB or Firewire can handle the overflow.
I'll probably do the Parallels thing when I get it back.
- mark 6-08-2009 9:49 pm [add a comment]