Yesterday, while working at maximum stress level, Final Cut hiccupped and froze, and took down my G4. I am unable to boot into X. Here's what I have tried:
1. Disk repair from the X installer: repaired permissions, won't boot, gives me the "you need to restart" window.
2. Safe boot. No help there.
3. fsck -y from the console. Did it until it fixed everything. Except for the "overlapped extent allocation" errors. Apparently fsck -y can't fix that.
4. Went to my local dealer, ready to buy a disk utility. He said, nope, that wont fix it. Just do an archive and install of X. Went hope, archived and installed, not no avail. Caveat: since I bought the G4 used, it came with no install disks. I did the archive and intall from a disk that came with a 12-inch G4 powerbook. I recall reading somewhere that some disks are machine-specific, so maybe this wont work on my G4?
5. Went back out and bought DiskWarrior. Ran it. Ran it again. Ran it until it stopped finding directory problems. Still can't boot into X.
6. When booted into 9, the X drive does not show up on the desktop. Never has, dont know why, but it means I can't designate the X drive as startup from within 9. Unplugged the 9 drive in an attempt to get X to "Safe mode". No good, just get the Grey screen with the Apple logo
7. With the 9 drive still unplugged, tried booting into the console to run fsck -y. Last couple of console lines read:
Singleuser boot -- fsck not done Root device is mounted read-only.
As I see it my two choices now are:
A. Go buy a new drive, install it in place of the OS 9 drive, put X on it, and try to mount the old X drive long enough to copy needed data off of it. Then pull the old X drive, and reinstall the OS 9 drive, keeping the old X drive for future re-use. Dont know if/how well this would work, or if I would be moving my old problem to my new drive.
B. Take it to my trusted Mac repair shop, and ask him fix the old drive. Prolly cost more, and I would not have the benefit of a larger drive at today's cheap prices.
Ok folks, have at it. What have I done wrong, and what should I do? I have been fixing my own Macs for a long time, and while it's against my religion to take a computer in for repair, I may be licked on this one.
Warren B.
-- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and...
Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! |
Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html>
G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/>
Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
