Tiger - Desktop unresponsive
I've been having major issues with a Powermac G5 running Tiger. The machine takes about 20 minutes to boot to desktop and once there I can't do anything. Clicking on the Apple menu results in a beach ball for about 4 minutes. Then the menu appears. Clicking on anything else causes the beachball again. I've been unable to get anything to work in short . . .
There are 50GB of photos by my father on there. He died a couple years ago and was an accomplished photographer. They have a lot of sentimental value to my family and I need to get them off.
1) Anyone guess what's causing this?
2) Any way to do a completely minimal boot?
3) Possible to boot to a terminal instead?
4) If anyone thinks it's a disc issue (corruption, bad sectors, etc), will running Disk Utility risk losing the files?
Thanks in advance. . .
(First post on AppleInsider btw!).
There are 50GB of photos by my father on there. He died a couple years ago and was an accomplished photographer. They have a lot of sentimental value to my family and I need to get them off.
1) Anyone guess what's causing this?
2) Any way to do a completely minimal boot?
3) Possible to boot to a terminal instead?
4) If anyone thinks it's a disc issue (corruption, bad sectors, etc), will running Disk Utility risk losing the files?
Thanks in advance. . .
(First post on AppleInsider btw!).
Comments
I've been having major issues with a Powermac G5 running Tiger. The machine takes about 20 minutes to boot to desktop and once there I can't do anything. Clicking on the Apple menu results in a beach ball for about 4 minutes. Then the menu appears. Clicking on anything else causes the beachball again. I've been unable to get anything to work in short . . .
There are 50GB of photos by my father on there. He died a couple years ago and was an accomplished photographer. They have a lot of sentimental value to my family and I need to get them off.
1) Anyone guess what's causing this?
2) Any way to do a completely minimal boot?
3) Possible to boot to a terminal instead?
4) If anyone thinks it's a disc issue (corruption, bad sectors, etc), will running Disk Utility risk losing the files?
Thanks in advance. . .
(First post on AppleInsider btw!).
Option 1:
Power up in verbose mode to see if it's throwing any errors.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492
Option 2:
While in the incredibly slow system Launch Activity Monitor.app and see what the hell is holding your CPU hostage.
/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app
Option 3:
Boot off the system disk, run Disk Utility and check file permission on the drive you are having trouble booting.
If you have another Mac around the first thing I would is to boot your Dad's computer in Target Disk Mode and copy the photos. Data recovery first, then fix the computer.
Agreed, assuming that is an option.
The simplest option would be to take the drive out of your dad's system, put it either as a secondary drive in your Leopard system internally [or external case which are inexpensive], reboot your primary leopard system or automount the external via USB or Firewire case. Move all the files you need, reformat the drive, put it back into the PowerMac, install Leopard on the G5 and have a second system.
After you have backed up the photos, take a look at the amount of free space on the hard drive. You can do this by either right clicking on the hard drive icon or in a finder window if you have a multi-button mouse or control + click on it. If the drive is overly crowded the various system and cache files can start bumping into each other which is not good. It is generally recommended that you keep at least 10% to 15% of the drive's capacity free.
If you have at least that much free space on the drive and have checked the other things I would be concerned about the health of the drive. You can check the S.M.A.R.T. Status of the drive in Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility). It should appear at the bottom of the window with something to the general effect of "S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified" if Disk Utility thinks the drive is OK. If you run permission repair from this same place it will check the permissions of all installed applications which is not the case if you do it from the (missing) installer disk.
There are a few utilities that you can download to run some other things. OnyX is free and can run the Cron routines, clear caches, and repair permissions. Make sure to download the Tiger version.
I would also suggest looking around in the Applications and Applications > Utilities to see if your father had any other system utilities such as TechToolPro or DiskWarrior.
As you are presently unable to locate the installer discs, you may want to give some consideration to cloning the drive in the Mac. You can use CarbonCopyCloner (donation ware) or SuperDuper! ($28 shareware with a functional trial mode). These will make a complete, bootable copy of the hard drive. Just make sure that you get a hard drive that is at least as large as the one in the Mac.
If you live in an area where there is an Apple Store, you can go online and make a reservation at the "Genius Bar" and they can run some diagnostics for you to help out. There is no charge for the Genius Bar visit, but repairs and such are charged.
Please post back and let us know what you find out.
Edit: Some additional resources are the Apple Discussion Forums or MacFixIt.
Now to pry my wife's macbook from her so I can do the Target mode thing (they really should have put firewire in the new ones).
All of the suggestions are good ones, especially the one to backup your father's photographs pronto!
After you have backed up the photos, take a look at the amount of free space on the hard drive. You can do this by either right clicking on the hard drive icon or in a finder window if you have a multi-button mouse or control + click on it. If the drive is overly crowded the various system and cache files can start bumping into each other which is not good. It is generally recommended that you keep at least 10% to 15% of the drive's capacity free.
If you have at least that much free space on the drive and have checked the other things I would be concerned about the health of the drive. You can check the S.M.A.R.T. Status of the drive in Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility). It should appear at the bottom of the window with something to the general effect of "S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified" if Disk Utility thinks the drive is OK. If you run permission repair from this same place it will check the permissions of all installed applications which is not the case if you do it from the (missing) installer disk.
There are a few utilities that you can download to run some other things. OnyX is free and can run the Cron routines, clear caches, and repair permissions. Make sure to download the Tiger version.
I would also suggest looking around in the Applications and Applications > Utilities to see if your father had any other system utilities such as TechToolPro or DiskWarrior.
As you are presently unable to locate the installer discs, you may want to give some consideration to cloning the drive in the Mac. You can use CarbonCopyCloner (donation ware) or SuperDuper! ($28 shareware with a functional trial mode). These will make a complete, bootable copy of the hard drive. Just make sure that you get a hard drive that is at least as large as the one in the Mac.
If you live in an area where there is an Apple Store, you can go online and make a reservation at the "Genius Bar" and they can run some diagnostics for you to help out. There is no charge for the Genius Bar visit, but repairs and such are charged.
Please post back and let us know what you find out.
Edit: Some additional resources are the Apple Discussion Forums or MacFixIt.