Knackered? MBP

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Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hi you lovely those in the know there



I have a beautiful 17" MBP c2d which is having rather massive problems.



It all boots up fine and can play dvd's and browse the web but,,,



seems to think it is full, despite having just deleted over 30 gig of stuff, now when I go to use the trash it wants to delete things straight away,



repeated 'startup disk full' messages,



on putting a blank dvd in, the usual 'what do you want to do with this disk' message comes up but then the disk Icon never shows up on the desktop or finder window.



Aaaargh!



Have I broken it?



I live in a share house with ten others, who are generally very together, sensible peoples, and friends, so I often leave the laptop around for general use and consequently can't account every minute of it's precious life, what could have gone wrong? how can I fix it? please can I fix it, please, I do love it so much,



Thankyou, any assistance greatly appreciated



yours,

yes quite desperate actually,



Liammm x

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    Wrong forum for this. Sounds like you need to erase and install OS X. Depending on where you are, you might consider making an appointment with a Mac Genius to check out.
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  • Reply 2 of 8
    pevepeve Posts: 518member
    or you can install mac os x over the existing system and keep your data (backing up data first would be wise).



    ps: you don't have file vault turned on, do you?
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  • Reply 3 of 8
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mrliammm View Post


    now when I go to use the trash it wants to delete things straight away,



    repeated 'startup disk full' messages,



    Usually the immediate deletion happens if you have a remote disk mounted. Maybe there's something wrong with permissions or possibly your trash folder.



    Try going into /Applications/Utilities and use Disk Utility to repair permissions.



    Does the internal drive show enough free space or is it still very low?
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  • Reply 4 of 8
    thanks, have repaired permissions and all seems to have returned to normal, such relief!



    Does anyone have any idea what can cause permissions to change like that?



    Thank you so much!
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  • Reply 5 of 8
    Oh, and yes i do have filevault on, after I repaired permissions, I restarted and it kicked in to free up the space, which it hasn't been doing.



    Unfortunately i can't remember the password to turn it off, stupid I know (I invented a cocktail of three words for it and now don't seem to be able to match that right combination!), so I think I'm stuck with it? is there any way of getting rid of it now?



    Thanks more!
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  • Reply 6 of 8
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mrliammm View Post


    Does anyone have any idea what can cause permissions to change like that?



    It could be 3rd party software or the Finder not behaving properly. The Finder really has some deep seated issues with permissions.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mrliammm


    Unfortunately i can't remember the password to turn it off, stupid I know (I invented a cocktail of three words for it and now don't seem to be able to match that right combination!), so I think I'm stuck with it? is there any way of getting rid of it now?



    You should try and migrate all your stuff to an unencrypted space. It's possible to reset account passwords but not filevault ones AFAIK because that would defeat the purpose of them. Filevault creates an encrypted disk image and puts all your home folder contents into it. If you forget the unlock password and the vault doesn't unlock at startup, you'd lose the entire contents of your home folder (music, settings, documents etc).



    The easiest way to sort this problem is to create a new user and copy all your preferences from your current home folder to the new one. This of course means choosing a different short name unless you do it in 2 steps.



    First create the new user and use a password you'll remember and give the account admin permissions and keep filevault off for this user.



    If your home folder is big then you'll want to avoid duplicating it so what you'd do is make a new folder somewhere - possibly in /Users/shared. Then move all your home folder contents into it while logged into the account that has filevault turned on. This should move all the stuff but not duplicate it.



    Then log in as the new user and move all the files from the folder you just created into the new home folder overwriting as necessary because you are just overwriting the defaults of the newly made user. Once this is done, you need to change permissions on all those files so they belong to the new account. This can be done in the Finder using the get info box. You select the home directory itself and apply the permissions to enclosed items.



    Like I say, the Finder isn't particularly good with permissions so the equivalent in the terminal is:



    sudo chown -R <name> <drag in the new home folder> hit return



    In the place of name you'd put your new short name (the name of the home directory itself).



    You will then need to log out and in again to the new account to get your desktop back to how it looked before.



    Once you're sure all your stuff is in place, you can delete your old filevault-protected account and vow never to enable filevault again.



    EDIT: there are two passwords btw. If you have forgotten the filevault password, you can use the master password to remove filevault. If it's not set, just set it and it should let you do it without all the stuff above.
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  • Reply 7 of 8
    Thankyou so much,



    Yes, I think its the master password i have forgotten, which I need to turn filevault off.

    I know my login and admin password, (thankfully!), that must be the other (filevault) one?



    Sounds like a bit of a mission but it's a way



    Sorry, total dunce here, (that's why i got mac in the first place!), but what is the 'terminal'? and what do you mean by 3rd party software exactly?



    still with the thanks !

    liam
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  • Reply 8 of 8
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mrliammm View Post


    Yes, I think its the master password i have forgotten, which I need to turn filevault off.

    I know my login and admin password, (thankfully!), that must be the other (filevault) one?



    Yeah, your login password is the one used by filevault and the master password is an override for any account. If you know your login password, you should be able to remove filevault following these steps:



    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=152354



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mrliammm View Post


    Sorry, total dunce here, (that's why i got mac in the first place!), but what is the 'terminal'? and what do you mean by 3rd party software exactly?



    The terminal is what people used to use way back before computers had a graphical interface. It hung around in unix systems because it's still the easiest and most reliable way to get some things done. In OS X, you can get it in /Applications/Utilities/. You can launch normal programs from it (using e.g open -a textedit) but usually, you run command-line programs that just give you text feedback.



    examples:

    the command 'kill' lets you force quit applications by ID

    'rm' deletes stuff (avoid that one)

    'python' runs python scripts - this can be very handy

    'uptime' tells you how long your computer has gone without a reboot

    'renice' assigns priorities to processes to make the run faster or slower

    'unzip', 'zip', 'gzip' etc help with archives and will usually work if OS X's BOMArchiver fails

    'lsof' can give you info about open files on a volume (if you ever get the message about not being able to eject a volume)

    'hdiutil' does the same as Disk Utility but you get more options and you can force eject disks

    'mv' moves files

    'locate' does a similar job to Spotlight but sometimes better as it searches locations Spotlight doesn't. It only updates overnight though.



    If you don't know how to use it, it's best not to go crazy with it and you likely won't use it but it can come in handy. If you hit tab twice at the prompt, then y for yes it will list all the commands/programs that are installed for use by the command-line. Hit spacebar to go down the list and q to stop.



    When I said 3rd party software, I mean software that doesn't come with the system e.g Photoshop is an example of a 3rd party program. I once downloaded a program that messed with the permissions on my /Library/caches folder and it made the whole system slow down, switching applications took about 30 seconds or so and they took much longer to launch.
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