[Macpartners] OS X Finder hanging proble

[John C. Welch]

On 10/9/04 2:04 PM, "Janet Littell" <jlittell at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> 1. Previous choice: I received expert advice to run fsck -f as opposed to
>      fsck -y.  FWIW, I later ran Repair Disk from Disk Utility, and
>       no problems were reported.

Okay, so the -f just forces the check on journaled disks. It doesn't
actually fix anything. The best way to use fsck is boot single user and run
fsck -fy

> 
> 2. I had created several new users, but the machine hung after logon in
>      each case.

This could be many different problems. Had you done any of the
/etc/authorization changes to allow you to get Kerberos tickets from the MIT
Realm on login?

> 
> 3.  Yesterday, I caused the machine to crash to verify that the chugging
>       sound was coming from the hard drive, which it is. This time
>       when I restarted, the machine hung after I logged on to my Admin
> account.
>       Several restarts didn't help.

In this case, this is normal behavior.

> 
> 3. I tried to boot from Disk Warrior but that didn't work. I didn't
>     try to actually install Disk Warrior.

What's "didn't work"? Did you get to the DiskWarrior application? License
screen? Installing DW is only good for the hardware checks and checking
other drives. You can't run DW on the boot drive, or the drive it's
installed on.

> 
> 4. I booted from the 10.3 install disk 1 and started a reinstall of 10.3
>      using Archive and Install. It aborted about 1/3 of the way through.
>      I don't know what messages appeared; I had left the room.
> 
> 5. I tried the reinstall again. This time I was offered the Easy
>      Install option. (I assume this meant that the installer no longer
>      detected a 10.3 System folder. Bad sign) I (wrongly?) decided that
>      I had nothing to lose so tried to continue the installation. This
>      time the installer message was that it could not install on this
>      machine. The result is the gray Apple screen on startup.

That's probably because you have a newer system than the install disks, and
the remnants of a dead install on your machine. What you want is an "archive
and install new system" installation. It's the equivalent of a clean install
under OS 9.

> 
> Based on this sequence of problems, does it sound like there is any
> hope for this machine, especially its data? The Disk Warrior
> documentation
> promises to restore data from problem machines but maybe mine is too
> far gone.

I'd say it's an 80% chance you have more problems than DW or anything else
can fix. My question would be, how good is your backup? If you have a solid
backup, I'd say just reformat the drive, install the OS and all updates, and
restore your data from the backup.

john

-- 
Hoc fermentum gustatum adsimilis bos bovis urina saccare circumvector sordes
crepida insudare.
(This beer tastes like cow piss strained through dirty sandals)

Jeff La Grua