OSX 10.4 wont boot ?

J

jmpower

Registered
My iMac G5 wont boot up. I get the grey apple screen but the login never appears. I ahve tried to boot in safe mode (holding down the shift key) but that causes the fan to start at full tilt.

Am very much an Apple beginner, an 'fischer-price' type advice for me ?
 
OK, have managed to get back into OSX, sometimes it goes to the login screen and sometimes it doesnt ?! Have run the disk utility, which stopped with the following error:

The underlying task reported failure on exit

The button to repair disk is greyed out ? I have a number of line items in red in the dik utility window:

Incorrect number of threads
Invalid leaf record count
Invalid volume file count
Invalid volume free block count
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired


As I sadi, the repair disk button is greyed out ?
 
Boot from the Tiger Install Disc, run 'Disk Utility' from the 'Installer' menu; and, perform 'Disk Repair' and 'Repair Disk Permissions' (at least twice each).
 
You can't repair the drive that you are booted to, with Disk Utility.
Boot to your installer/restore DVD
Run Disk Utility from the Utilities (or the Installer menu, depending on which version you have)
There you will be able to choose the Repair button.
If the repair completes, be sure to try that repair a second time, just to make sure that no other errors are present.
If you still get errors, especially the 'underlying task reported failure on exit', you should consider having the hard drive replaced.
 
OK, I have managed to do the repair disk from my OSX Panther instalkl disk. I still have an Invalid leaf record count which I guess is not too healthy ? Any advice on what to do next ?
 
Your Hard Drive is dying a slow HollyWood style death. Stop right now and try to get you data off that drive A.S.A.P. Then replace that drive.
 
I concur with Satcomer's conclusions. You might want to consider picking up an external FireWire hard drive that has matching or greater capacity to your iMac's hard drive. Once you get it home, you could partition it into two volumes: 6 GB, and the rest as a second partition. Install Mac OS X 10.3 on the 6 GB partition and then upgrade it to 10.4. Once you've got it updated and running, download and install Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

Open Carbon Copy Cloner and attempt to clone the iMac's internal HD over to the larger partition on your new drive. Then open Disk Utility and repair it, in case any damage transferred over. Once you've cloned, you should now be able to select the partition from Startup Disk and boot from it.

Then seek a replacement hard drive for the inside of your Mac. Once you've got the replacement, boot again from the 6 GB partition and clone over from the larger backup partition to your new iMac HD.

In the future, continue cloning your internal HD to the backup partition so that if you ever have this type of failure again, you've got a working backup. Keep the 6 GB partition around for performing repairs.

If you need further help with this, visit my site and contact me directly: http://www.macworks.biz/
 
Thanks Chris, I'll get going on that. Annoying about the HDD given that my mac is just over 1 year old and out of the warranty.
 
This seems to have worked wonderfully Chris. I have an external firewire drive. This now has OSX10.4.7 on it in partition 1, partition 2 has the cloned internal HD. I have run disk repair on partition 2 and it is clean as a whistle !

OK, so, whilst I wait for the new internal drive to arrive, how do I boot up from my external partition 2 and use that ? Or should I wait until I clone this back to my new internal HD ?

Thanks again Chris, really appreciated.

JP
 
OK, am considering myself a veritable expert now !! Have just found how to do this by holding the option key on startup & then making the change in System Preferences.

Thanks for listening !!
 
While the problem presented may be a failing hard disk drive, and a new drive appears to have been already ordered, running 'Disk Warrior' from another Mac - with the problem Mac connected, via 'FireWire' - and in 'Target Disk' mode, may have also been a viable solution.
 
OK, have got my brand spanking new HDD, a 250GB monster. But, when I boot from my 6GB 'repair' external disk, I cant see the new internal HDD in disk utility ?? Do I have to do something to make it recognisable ? Have I missed a step somewhere ?
 
Well even if you booted from your repair partition, you should be able to see the new hard drive. If you're still not able to access it, I would check to make sure all of the cables are connected properly.
 
Chris,

Everything was working fine from my new internal HDD, then, after my Mac being in sleep mode all night, on wake up it froze. I ran the Apple hardware test on the CD supplied & it failed the mass storage test with the following error code:

2STF/8/3:S-ATA Bus 0 Master

Any ideas ?

JP
 
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