Need Serious MAC Help - United Bimmer Community

**RealBmw 02** · 08-11-2005, 04:26 PM

Hopefully someone can help me out with this.

My G4 Powerbook (1.33 GHz) was working fine... it started to slow up a bit so I went to restart.

When the startup screen appears it just freezes up. Sometimes it only gets to where the grey apple shows up with the scrolling circle right underneath it. Other times it will get to the next blue page with the progress bar and freeze up there.

I tried doing a "safe restart" with the extensions off, but it just freezes up. I also tried booting from the system cd and then doing a disk utilites repair, but it says there is an error and could not repair my disk

I don't want to have to reinstall the software and loose all my files. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Adam

witeshark · 08-11-2005, 10:22 PM

Try repair permissions. After every software update, and about every 2 weeks: close all apps and log totally off. Log on, go in Finder, Applications. Utilities, Disk Utility. After the message -getting disk information- select volume (below the hard drive name -upper left corner). Just highlight it. Now look to the lower two things are there near the middle, verify permissions, repair permissions. Click repair permissions. If you can't get on to do that, restart in single user terminal (Hold Apple S during restart) and in there type /sbin/fsck -fy until the ***File System changed*** stops showing

nick_318is · 08-11-2005, 10:39 PM

Whiteshark may have some good ideas. You can also try going to apple.com then click on Support, then discussions which is up near the top and then select what computer or system you have problems with and ask questions, I have found the people on there to be very knowledgable and helpful, and you should get a quick response.

**RealBmw 02** · 08-12-2005, 02:05 PM

i've tried most of those things you suggested witeshark, with no luck. I think my system has a small problem so I am on the hunt for a friend with 10.3 or 10.4 so that I can just re-install my system. Hopefully that will solve my problems.

**Dudesky** · 08-12-2005, 09:10 PM

Did you recently run Software Update? Sometimes a botched update session will screw things up like that.

If you have to reinstall the OS, your files can still be saved if you can't boot up normally, provided you have access to another Mac. Connect the two via Firewire cable. Boot your machine up while holding the 'T' key, and your hard drive will show up on the other Mac's desktop. Then just drag and drop your files temporarily to that machine.

**RealBmw 02** · 08-13-2005, 07:45 PM

dudesky, thanks for the tip... my bro told me to do the same thing, so i connected to my old mac tha I gave my mom and brought over all of my important files. I'm still on the hunt for a 10.4 disk, I think I am getting closer

**RealBmw 02** · 08-16-2005, 10:04 PM

okay I finally found a 10.4 disk, but now when I try to upgrade the system it gives me an error. It says there were problems upgrading and to restart and try again.

So I tried installing the software by replacing the old system and having my preferences caried over. No luck there either.

I am really trying to avoid loosing all of my files, but it doesn't really look like there is any other way at the moment.

Any more tips guys? Thanks

witeshark · 08-16-2005, 10:21 PM

Repair permissions and delete crons did not help? crons:
cron tasks 1. Close all apps 2. Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities).
2. Type: sudo sh /etc/daily
Note: Typing "daily" runs tasks normally scheduled for a daily interval. Type "monthly" or "weekly" in place of "daily" to runs tasks scheduled for those intervals.
3. Press Return.
4. Enter your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
5. Quit Terminal when the task is complete. weekly tasks usually require a longer time to run than monthly or daily