Major Problem

J

JML

I'm Hungry
About a month ago, give or take, my G5 Power mac crashed (10.4). I had to manually shut down and restarted with a blinking question mark. I had a back-up and used Disk Warrior to duplicate my hard drive. I wiped it clean and reinstalled everything. Went fine for a couple to 3 weeks. Then it crashed again. No blinking question mark, but it wouldn't start up. Apple and spinner, then it would turn off. I again wiped it clean and reinstalled. This was recently. I hadn't gotten around to installing anything other than the OS and updates. No apps, .mac, etc. Just the OS. It crashed again. It won't start up. Just the apple and spinner. And it sits like that till I manually shut it down. I'm not about to reinstall again without an answer to the problem. I assume it's hardware related but don't know. Any thoughts out there? Should I just bring it to Apple or TekServe in NYC? I'd appreciate any ideas.

Thanks,
Jason
 
JML said:
... I assume it's hardware related but don't know. Any thoughts out there? Should I just bring it to Apple or TekServe in NYC? I'd appreciate any ideas.

...
Click to expand...
At long last. With all that wiping and reinstalling, it should have occurred to you to run Disk Utility and/or fsck from the Terminal to check your hard drive and repair it, if possible. If you drive is defective, then no amount of wiping and reinstalling will fix your problem.

As for your question, take it to Apple. Do you really think another company will do a better job?
 
JML, make sure you don't use Disk Warrior ever again, it's not needed for OS X. Do follow MMs advice.You may just have a defective harddrive.
 
MisterMe said:
At long last. With all that wiping and reinstalling, it should have occurred to you to run Disk Utility and/or fsck from the Terminal to check your hard drive and repair it, if possible. If you drive is defective, then no amount of wiping and reinstalling will fix your problem.

As for your question, take it to Apple. Do you really think another company will do a better job?
Click to expand...

Somone pee in your cornflakes today MisterMe??
 
Thanks for the advise. I don't know how to use Terminal. And Disk Utility said it couldn't be repaired. I'm not a tech guy. I have an IT dept at work for that. And I've been luck at home I guess. I'll bring it to Apple. Out of curiosity, what's the problem with Disk warrior. Someone recommended it to me. The first crash happened during a backup and I was nervous about losing everything.
 
First, back up all your personal files if you can before embarking on repairs. I understand completely if this isn't possible...

Disk Warrior isn't bad, necessarily, just not really needed because of how OS X manages its files. Article here:
http://www.macworld.com/forums/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Number=63846

No need to use terminal. Just restart while holding command + S till the black screen with white text comes up. Release those keys and type fsck -f (or fsck -fy in Tiger) and let the process finish. Then type reboot to restart the computer.

Hopefully this fixes the problem. If not, Try your system disk again and run disk utility from that (you'll need to be booted on the cd to do this; hold the c key down on restart with the disc in the drive).

If neither of these things works then I do recommend taking the computer into an apple store or licensed apple repair shop (I see ads for TekServe in magazines, make sure they are licensed)
 
No need to use terminal. Just restart while holding command + S till the black screen with white text comes up. Release those keys and type fsck -f (or fsck -fy in Tiger) and let the process finish. Then type reboot to restart the computer.
Click to expand...
If that scares you, booting from your Install DVD and running Disk Utility (utilities menu) to repair your hard drive does the exact same thing. The reason you cannot repair your hard drive from your booted system is that Disk Utility will not repair the system it is "sitting" on. Not that either way is preferable, just letting you know.
 
I have a different view of Disk Warrior than Natobasso. I've been using Disk Warrior for many years. It consistently finds and corrects Volume Directory problems that Disk Utility, FSCK, TechTool Pro, Drive Genius, etc. cannot find much less fix. In most cases, it is best to run it off the CD. It will also run off an external hard drive.

Mac
 
I've had Disk Warrior save hard drives that OS X built in tools failed to save.
As long as it's a build compatible with the OS version you are trying to repair...
 
I use Disk Warrior once a month to keep the system running smooth. Despite Apple itself saying programs like this are not needed, it still is. Disk Warrior has also fixed my Powerbook when it wouldn't start up.
 
For what it's worth, the genius bar guy at Apple ran Disk Warrior before diagnosing the hard drive as malfunctioning. I got a new hard drive, and so far so good. But I just restored last night. Hope the mess is over.
 
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