crash and burn

terry123 · July 6, 2003 12:52AM

My imac suffered it's first crash in 14 months of service. The problem occured while the wife was ordering a photo off of the iphoto app. After pressing order prints, the wheel of death just kept spinning for literally 30 minutes. She eventually just turned the compter off with the power button and called to tell me the compter was injured. Problems I am having now: Computer takes about 5 minutes to start up. Once it does begin to load, it gets hung up on directory services or something. Also the time was changed, my passord does not work in some areas. Tweeking password has now left me with no password. The real pain in the but is my DHCP/DNS are messed up. I can not get the computer to deal with DNS. I typed the numerical address for apple and it loaded the page minus graphics. The line in is working but my computer will not deal with it.....How do I go about starting to fix this? DHCP is supposed to be so simple. I power cycled the modem down, turned off the compter, turned the modem on then computer ect ect with no success. Please help. Has this happened to anybody else. System 10.2.6 Safari 1.0, current iphoto, imac g4 800..Thanks for reading this..

Terry

1337_5l4xx0r · July 6, 2003 1:19AM

Try the usual: start up from the OS X cd, repair permissions, run disk repair.

gardenofearthlydelights · July 6, 2003 4:26AM

I concur with Mr. 1337.

Or it could be fsck'd up. Try this:

Start while pressing Apple-s (single user mode).

After the gobblety-gook, type: fsck -y

wait... wait... wait...

When it's done, you can either type fsck -y again, or type reboot.

Turning it off without shutting it down may have corrupted something on the hard drive, and this may fix it.

terry123 · July 6, 2003 9:00AM

This may sound silly but when you say to start up from t the osx cd, do you mean my jaguar cd. I did this but panicked when it said it was preparing to install the software again. I read somewhere that I could selectively install a password reset. I guess I need to look for the utilities folder on the disk for the disk repair. I will keep you informed and thank you very much.

Terry

ebby · July 6, 2003 10:42AM

Totally off subject, but my brother's screen name for Counter-Strike is "Crash and Burn".

I know some of you have PS's, so if you see him online, hive him a "one-two" for me.

terry123 · July 6, 2003 9:52PM

Ok, I have fsck -yd, started up with jaguar cd and ran disk utility. Things of note with the disk utility is it said there was a problem with an invalid sibling link. Now when the computer restarts, it takes me to a log in screen that has my name on it. however my name and password do not Can I get back in somehow. I am getting nervous about not backing up my iphoto library now. My wife is going to kill me......

Terry

thuh freak · July 6, 2003 9:59PM

i suggest you go back to single user mode (start the comp, with apple-s). but this time, dont leave (quit, reboot or anything) until you have done a successful 'fsck -y'. you can redo this command several times (and that may be necessary). if after 10-15 tries, if it doesn't do it successfully, then you may have a more serious issue on your hand (lets hope you dont). once it works (and fsck says everything is okay), then do 'sudo reboot'. you can also go back to the jaguar cd, and do its disk utility. but again, don't quit the program until it says that everything is ok. it may take a couple of runs for it to get everything.

paul · July 6, 2003 10:26PM

why dont you just do the password reset on the jag CD?

terry123 · July 6, 2003 10:44PM

Paul, that is my next step. I am doing a couple more of these fsck -y deals. It keeps coming up with the same errors: invalid sibling link and an invalid volume count. Please bear with me, is the password reset on disk one or disk 2 of the jaguar cd. I really want to be sure I don't erase anything on the hard drive. Thanks again for helping me work thru this.

terry

terry123 · July 6, 2003 11:09PM

Paul, I tried the password reset on disk 1 of jaguar and it is telling me that my password has not been saved for me and that I may not have permission to edit this disk or a general failure has occured. What now? Do I select system administrator(root)?

alcimedes · July 6, 2003 11:16PM

before doing anything as root, did you run the permissions fixing stuff off the Jaguar CD?

(when you get ready to install, check the menu on the top left. there should be a disk utility option)

if you ran that and it's still not working, you can always install Jag over Jag. unless you select the "clean install" option, you will keep all of your files.

i would guess there's a corrupted file it's choking on.

terry123 · July 6, 2003 11:28PM

I have run the verify and repair disk permissions early in my quest to fix this problem Of note, I just ran the verify and repair disk and the program crashed when I hit repair disk.....So, I guess I will try the permission stuff again. It looks like I may be installing jag over jag like you say. How do I deal with two system folders? I would like to keep my system as clean as possible. Thanks for the help again.

Terry

alcimedes · July 7, 2003 1:56AM

it should just overwrite the existing files, thus fixing/copying over the corrupted file.

you'll only have 1 system folder, and any changes you've made (installed preference panes etc.) should still remain.

if that doesn't work, then go with the archive install option. that saves all of your user files and network settings. you don't lose anything this way either.

the final option is a clean install which wipes the drive. not really your best bet unless you have no other options.

also, did you get Apple Care on the machine? if so a call in to Apple might fix this problem w/o all this messing around. i know a few people have had excellent luck with their tech support.

terry123 · July 7, 2003 8:35AM

I actually did buy the extended warrenty so that sounds like a good idea. Check this out, when I was poking around the jag disk, It wouldn't let me just overwrite the system folder because it said I didn't have enough memory. This doesn't make sense because I have 756 or RAM and at least 25 gigs of hard drive space left. The only option it gave me was the archival method. Is there a way to free up memory without haveing access to my desktop? When this problem started, I still had access to the desktop(did not have to log in) Once running the disk utility and verify/repair disk I have been locked out because of the login screen which I can not log in to. Aughhh..

Terry

crash and burn

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