Start up issues

N

ncumisky

Registered
Dear all,
I've recently had an issue with the startup of my Macbook - its one of the very first metal cased versions - beyond that I can't recall much about the spec but it was bought pretty quickly after release and is the lower spec'd version.
Since last week I started receiving 'startup disc is near full' messages. Unsure what to do I hacked around the system preferences and changed a setting in the startup disc options (in my lunacy I can't recall what I changed) but since then, I've been unable to start my mac and only see a flashing question mark on a folder at startup.
I don't think (read desperately hope) that I've fried anything. There is no clicking or uncomfortable sounds (nor have there been) at startup.
As you'd expect from a home user with a networked PC at work I've never backed up my hard drive regularly, fortunately majority of super value pics are on flickr and mp3s on external hard drive but I'd love to be able to reclaim everything on my laptop.

Any ideas on how to start up my Mac would be warmly received, otherwise its a trip to the regentst. genius bar for me and my poor sick mac, most likely owner inflicted..

thank
Nic
 
Best thing to do first is to get all your files. Start up your computer in Target Disk mode (get a firewire cable) and connect your comp to another PC - in Target Disk mode it becomes a hard drive, essentially, and doesn't need to boot up to see the hard drive contents. http://thesalon.blogspot.com/2009/06/turn-your-computer-into-firewire-hard.html

The 'start up disk now full' message usually means you need to make more space on your hard drive - the more full it is the more your system performance is degraded. See this post on macosx.com for some ideas: http://macosx.com/tech-support/startup-disk-full/8031.html

With any luck you'll be able to salvage all your files and then you can reboot and start in single user mode to run a permissions repair from "root": http://thesalon.blogspot.com/2009/05/mac-os-x-single-user-mode.html

Keep us posted on your progress.
 
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