Startup Problem

K

Knil

Registered
A friend of mine moved out of state, and he's had trouble getting his computer started up. He created a user profile for his girlfriend, and since then he can't get his computer to start up. He says it makes it to the grey and white apple logo, but it goes no further. He says he can't startup in the command prompt (Apple-S I think) either. Any ideas?
 
Try having him boot up from the OS X Install CD and run Disk Utility from there (you can get to it when the installer asks you to select a language -- when it does, you should be able to find "Open Disk Utility..." or something similar in the menus at the top). Repair the disk (not repair permissions -- the other repair option) and see if that helps.

Also, there are a lot of background processes that run when the grey Apple logo is displayed -- he may want to boot up the computer during a time of little use and just let it sit there. File system journaling and other processes get updated during that time, and if major changes have been made or added to the filesystem (ie, adding a new user!) it can take some time for those processes to run.
 
Well, he doesn't have a startup disk right now (if he has to have one, we'll burn one and ship it to him). He tried starting up and letting it run, but that didn't work. Any other ideas?
 
Well, if the computer won't start up at all from the internal disk, then there's not much else to do other than use a CD/DVD to start up and try some sort of repair that way.

He can always try zapping the PRAM (hold down Command-Option-P-R at startup and keep it held down until the computer restarts 3 times) or resetting the Open Firmware (boot into open firmware by holding down Command-Option-O-F at startup until the UNIX-style prompt appears. Type "reset-nvram" {no quotes} and press enter, then type "reset-all" {no quotes} and hit enter again).

I doubt either of those will work, as they have nothing to do with the disk that starts up the computer, but it won't hurt to try.
 
The first idea is the main one, most likely will help, or will tell your friend what to do next...
ElDiabloConCaca said:
Try having him boot up from the OS X Install CD and run Disk Utility from there (you can get to it when the installer asks you to select a language -- when it does, you should be able to find "Open Disk Utility..." or something similar in the menus at the top). Repair the disk (not repair permissions -- the other repair option) and see if that helps.
Click to expand...

Unless this has already been tried, send an OS X installer CD to your friend.
 
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