OS X 10.4.1.1 Hangs During Startup (G4 867 Quicksilver)

M

maniac11235

Registered
Hello,

My old faithful G4 867 Quicksilver won't start up. :( The grey screen with the apple appears, then the progress bar over a blue background. The progress bar gets to full and the system hangs there.

Here are the answers to the "Read This Before Posting" questions:

What OS X system (version) are you running?
10.4.1.1
--Have you run permissions yet?
Not sure exactly what that means, but attempted to repair them using Disk Utility and then DiskWarrior
--Have you used Disk Utility from the CD to Repair Disk?
Yes
--What devices are connected to your machine?
USB Keyboard, USB mouse connected through keyboard port, lcd monitor,
ethernet cable

More background on the situation:

I have zapped the PRAM.
It will not boot into safe mode.

I have booted from the OS X install CD and run Disk Utility. It found and fixed some errors but not others. I got messages about "Invalid Node Structures."

Research online pointed me to Diskwarrior, which I purchased and ran from CD. It found and fixed a bunch of errors but still the system won't get beyond that full progress bar screen.

I am able to boot into OS 9 and I can browse the drive with the OSX installation on it.

I think I could hook up an external drive and transfer files (photos etc) off the machine using OS9. However, I have email messages, contacts, etc. which I need to get also. Those are in an old (not sure which) version of Entourage I was running under OSX.

Suffice to say, getting into OSX long enough to open Entourage and export some contacts/fwd some messages would be very very valuable.

Any suggestions are GREATLY appreciated.
 
When you ran Disk Warrior did you run it couple times and did it keep coming up with errors? Do you specifically remember step 5 of rebuilding the directory if it said something like "speed reduced from disk malfunction" with a number count next to it?
 
Thank you for your reply.

I did run DW a couple times. While I don't recall exactly the differences between the results of the 2 DW repairs, there may have been fewer errors the 2nd time around.

I do not recall seeing anything referring to "speed reduced from disk malfunction." It's possible that I missed such a message but I don't think so.

If there is any additional info I can provide that would be helpful please say so.
 
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You can try a safe boot by starting holding the shift key. It may take forever until you get a login screen, but it might straighten things out, If it does safe boot just reboot normally afterwards to see if it starts up normally.
 
Kind of difficult to provide more help if you can't tell us what exactly DiskWarrior came up with. My gut tells me you probably need an archive and install for the 10.4 side. Back up your data first just in case it turns out the drive is failing.
 
I will run diskwarrior again and note the results. If that proves futile I will go the archive & install route (not sure how to do that.)

thank you again for all of your help.
 
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