Help - Apple will not boot

T

t_habrock

Registered
I hope I have the right forum...in actuality I do not know if it is a hardware problem or a software issue...

All I know is I have a major problem and I am very frightened it is bad. I installed a PCI USB 2.0 card (Iogear), booted the computer (no problem), then installed the software for my OS as instructed.

After installation, I was prompted to restart, I clicked RESTART, however, the computer did not boot, I got the Apple strartup tone, when the white page with the grey Apple logo came up instead of getting the spinning gear progress wheel and then OS progress bar, I got a black bar on the stem of the Apple logo with what is possibly very, very tiny blue text. I have tried to reboot and reboot, but nothing, it is no good...same result.

I am also unable to start in Safe Mode.

It does seem to run through all the hardware diagnostics (I can see my optical mouse light up, it fires the optical scanner, and all), but I still get that black bar and then it just stops...I am so scared right now...

I removed the PCI card just in case, but it did no good. Does anyone know what it could be?

Please tell me it is not fatal............................................
 
What happens if you hold Shift on startup (to disable kernel extensions)? If it boots, the software installed something that's messing with your extensions.
 
Yup I already tried that...that is the "Safe Boot" and there was no change...

I also tried the following to no avail:

* Tried starting in single user mode (Command+S);
* Disconnected all non-essential USB and Firewire peripherals (excpet mouse and keyboard)
* Removed all installed PCI cards.

No change at all.
 
Do you have a HardwareTest CD? You can try to see whether it finds something broken.
Have you checked that all internal components are correctly plugged in? You have added and removed hardware, so maybe you accidentally unplugged / forgot to re-plug something.
Did you try to boot from a CD and see if you can run DiskUtility from there? Maybe it can solve your problem.

I hope you find a solution, good luck!
 
Yeah, I checked to make sure all components were seated firmly.

I'm not sure what this means really, but the problem happened after installing new USB 2.0 driver for an Iogear PCI card.

I have a hardware test CD, however since the computer will not boot up, I am unable to open the Superdrive to insert (unless there is a way to manually eject that I am unaware of).

Thanks.
 
Well, how far did the computer get in the boot process? If the keyboard doesn't work, then try prying open the front cover over the CD tray and pushing the button which should be on the drive itself.
 
My CD tray does not have a manual eject button, BUT what I didn't think of last night because I was too freaked out with worry was to hold down the mouse button as the computer starts to eject the disc.

I booted from the Hardware Test Disc by holding "C" during start-up and got the following error message:

INVALID MEMORY ACCESS at
%SRRO: 00034870
%SRR1: 00003030

Then it said type "mac-boot" to continue booting or type "Shutdown" to shutdown.

I tried "mac-boot" and got the following error message:

INVALID MEMORY ACCESS at
%SRRO: 01c0f7b0
%SRR1: 00003030

I CAN call Apple and they can probably tell me what they mean, but does anyone out there know? This leads me to think it is a hrdware problem...but

Hold on, I can boot from my OSX CD no problem? I am running Disk Utility now to see what happens, but this seems indicative of a software problem, otherwise I wouldn't be able to boot from the OSX CD either...right?
Any thoughts...?

-- ADDITIONAL --
Okay, at startup I held the "OPTION" button, which allows you to choose which bootable drive to access, when I select my MAIN HD, I get the "NO" symbol (O with a "/" through the center), BUT if I choose my alternate system HD with OSX installed it boots just fine (you have no idea how glad I am that I installed OSX on my spare 10GB HD to be an alternate system disc in case...) This keeps getting crazier and crazier I still can't tell if it is hardware or software related or both.

Any ideas on tests to run now that I'm in on the other HD?
 
Some more progress:

I was able to boot with the Alternate HD (as noted above), so I ran Disk Utility and chose "Repair Drive". The Drive Repair fixed Catalog Heirarchy problems. I kept running it until I received the message "the hard drive appears to be fine."

I also ran Norton Disc Doctor, but it was unable to examine/repair disc, I received Error 23019 - I looked it up on Symantec's website and they said this indicates "no parent directory was found". They reccomend using Volume Recover to rebuild the directories. Are they any other remedies I can try? Please, any help would be appreciated.
 
Above, it sounded like you might have a faulty RAM chip. Try switching the slots your RAM sits in, and if no dice, boot the computer with just one installed at a time.
 
Did you reset your PRAM? If not, do it (and do it 3 times in a row).

One more thing: if you can boot from another drive (in 9 if possible), do so.

Then, navigate to System>Library.

Delete these 2 files:
Extensions.kextcache
Extensions.mkext

And reboot.

Sometimes when you install new extensions into X, the kext doesn't update and the computer won't reboot. Deleting these 2 files forces the OS to update the files and the computer can boot (it's happened to me 2x).

OH! If you've updated to 10.2.8, your card is supported without drivers (my SIIG USB 2.0 card is).
 
I could not find

System>Library.

Extensions.kextcache
Extensions.mkext

I did a search and the only file that came up was:

HD -> usr -> sbin -> kextcache

with no sign of .mkext

Should I still delete the kextcache even though it wasn't in the location you noted?

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.
 
You might want to do an archive install - same as clean install. Do not install the Iogear.
 
I agree with Cheryl - archive and install, keep all your stuff, but a clean install of Jaguar. And don't install the IOGear, 10.2.8 supports it without additional drivers.
 
I know this is many months later, but just wanted to follow up. What I finally ended up doing was just re-installing OSX from my install disk - I reformatted the HD and re-installed fresh! It has been fine since then.

Thanks,
Tim
 
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