I cannot start my Powerbook G4 1.67GHz. I just get to the startup screen (Apple logo) with a spinning progress indicator. I've tried booting from the install CD and running Disk Utility. It reports "Getting disk information..." with yet another eternally spinning progress indicator. I'm trying to boot into single-user mode to run fsck and am getting the following output:
standard timeslicing quantum is 10000us
vm_page_bootstrap: 253319 free pages
mig_table_max_displ = 70
112 prelinked modules
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
using 2621 buffer headers and 2621 cluster IO buffer headers
IOPCCard info: Intel PCIC probe: TI 1510 rev 00
FireWire (OHCI) Apple ID 31 built-in now active, GUID 001124ff fe411cbc; max speed s800
CSRHIDTransitionDriver::pr
CSRHIDTransitionDriver::pr
Security auditing service present
BSM auditing present
disabled
rooting via boot-uuid from /chosen: 44B07742-5E8E-359C-A566-CA
Waiting on <dict ID="0"><key><IOProviderCla
kStorageDriver/ST9100823A Media/IOApplePartitionSche
BSD root: disk0s3, major 14, minor 2
jnl: replay_journal: from 1265664 to: 7557632 (joffset 0x8601000)
disk0s3: I/O error.
jnl: update_fs_block: error reading fs block # 40168! (ret 5)
disk0s3: I/O error.
I never am given the opportunity to enter commands. It simply updates the screen every two minutes or so with a new version of the last message, incrementing the number after "fs block #" with each new iteration. What should I do!?!
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I hope you get your data back from DiskWarrior. If you fail with that, MacUser has just done a review of file recovery utilities, and it might be worth looking at some of the other options, particularly the salvaging options.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/mac
Prosoft Data Rescue II got a particularly good mention.
Good luck,
Joel
I'll say this, beware of Mac updates. I was burned previously by the OS X 10.4.3 update--fried my logic board. This is well documented online and has been answered to by Apple with a recall (although only a VERY limited range of serial numbers were included...I was not as fortunate.) This crash took place immediately after the updates released on February 15. As pleased as I have been with my Mac (I'm a PC IT guy by trade...shhh, don't tell!), this has gotten really old. In case you're wondering, a simple Google of "February 15 updates", "Mac", and "crash" turns up a number of users with similar problems. Seriously, do they test these at all? And, Apple is so proud of their products that getting them to admit a mistake (even when they've issued a recall) is next to impossible. Quite unprofessional, in my opinion. Nonetheless, I still love my Mac. But, Chaucer was a fool when he said, "Love is blind."
Either way, I've been able to recover a large portion of my data, thanks to DiskWarrior. I was unable to save any applications, and am in the middle of the tedious process of reinstalling all of these. Thank you, however, DiskWarrior.
An interesting note about DiskWarrior... The program has a plethora of hidden features which are not documented whatsoever. My drive was so thrashed that it took DiskWarrior 5 hours to complete its task of rebuilding the directory. When I went to preview the old and new directories, it tried again to seek from the hard drive. It never was able to show me the preview. I had to restart and wait through the entire 5-hour process, again. This time, I was armed with a bit more information. See, I had actually called a tech that came to my house. He sat down at the DiskWarrior screen and talked through everything I had been attempting. In short, I was charged $120 for a tech to tell me (again, a PC tech myself) that I had been doing everything he would have done. The only saving grace for this--again, unprofessional practice, in my opinion--was his private connection with the top techie at Alsoft (the creator of DiskWarrior). This gentleman told him to have me Option+Click the Preview button once DiskWarrior had finished rebuilding the directory. Doing so prevents DiskWarrior from attempting to show the old directory in the Preview screen. In fact, you don't even have the option to browse there. By doing this, I was able to recover most of my data. My drive was so thrashed that it continually slowed during the recovery process to the point that it would recover nothing more. The entire process took several days. Fortunately, most of my files have been recovered and I now have a daily backup solution in place.
Many thanks to all who helped,
Brennon
I really don't understand your rant.
I'm an Apple-certified tech and have been for a few years, but I have worked with WIndows all this time as well, built my own PC etc. etc.
The biggest problem with Apple and users new to it, and the plethora of FUD sites with "Chicken LIttle, the sky is falling ! This update killed my computer !" stories. You can go back to find people who said the 8.1 update (over Mac OS 8, *totally* pre-Mac OS X) "killed their computer". It was nonsense then and still is now.
The same would be true for example, if someone slapped XP overtop a drive that's 4 years old, running 98, and never had any maintenance run on it. I'm exaggerating, but only for illustrative purposes.
Sorry for your experience. The drive had an issue that was waiting to display symptoms.
As always, even with simple updates, have a backup first. Run disk diagnosis/repair next, and it's no panacea but it's good to run "Repair Permissions" prior to applying an update.
You're right... Having several "geniuses" at the Genius Bar in both Santa Monica and San Jose acknowledge what I have described as accurate is indeed nonsense. Hmm...some geniuses! Beyond this, I've spoken with several friends from church back in Campbell (a town up in Silicon Valley near Cupertino) who have been Apple employees for quite some time. They will also acknowledge the issue. But when I actually want a repair? Not a chance. Interesting customer service plan...
I'm not selling my PB, I still love using it. I said it before and I'll continue to say it--it's a great system. But, what you call nonsense, I have a tough time buying into. The opinioins of long time friends who cash Apple paychecks every two weeks and more than a few "geniuses" rank a bit higher than hardened Apple "fans." Nonetheless, thank you again for your help, and enjoy the points.
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by: dalesitPosted on 2007-02-19 at 00:54:07ID: 18561619
This does not look good - the fsck is reporting major disk errors, and from the sounds of it, Disk Utility is also having major problems trying to access the disk.
Do you have any other disk repair utilities? Do you have a recent backup?
The fsck errors are reporting an I/O error when trying to read your disk. The block errors are the blocks it has tried to read and failed.
If you have Disk Warrior or another disk utility I would try giving them a go. However, my guess is that you are going to need to replace this hard disk, or as a minimum reformat it and restore from backup.
Sorry,
Joel