[Macpartners] OS X Finder hanging proble

[Kerem B Limon]

Quoting Janet Littell <jlittell at MIT.EDU>:

> An unfortunate series of machine degradations combined with a less 
> than brilliant series of choices on my part has led to the machine 
> now hanging on startup, at the gray apple screen. On Tuesday, I'll 
> take it in to PC Services and see if anything can be salvaged.
> 
> This is how it went:
> 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.
> 
> 2. I had created several new users, but the machine hung after logon in
>      each case.
> 
> 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.

If the "chugging" you refer to is the repeated failure to seek and align the
head and/or read data on the tracks, which I am guessing it is (as opposed to
the typical acoustics from a busy hard drive), you should stop trying to do
anything at all that involves the hard drive, including using DiskWarrior or
another tool (which may otherwise be very helpful). While "chugging" (as
opposed to "clicking", say) does not conclusively ID a broken hard drive to me,
even people without experience can note a difference in the way the hard drive
sounds and use different words to describe the problem.

Given the possibility of an imminent hard drive failure and potentially further
corruption by trying to meddle with it, I suggest you take it to the Help Desk
instead of PC Service. They can

- remove your hard drive, mount it in another Mac, and recover whatever data is
possible,
- remove the hard drive again, place it in a PC and run full manufacturer
diagnostics to recertify or identify the problem (as HDD vendors do not make
Mac versions of proprietary HDD diagnostic tools),
- and if all is in fact well with the HDD, reinstall a clean OS and restore your
data to the right places.

This may cost you a few, but will save you time, further data loss and
corruption, not to mention a lot of headaches--unless you don't mind risking
your data and are in this for the learning part of it.

>       Several restarts didn't help.
> 
> 3. I tried to boot from Disk Warrior but that didn't work. I didn't
>     try to actually install Disk Warrior.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Thanks,
> Janet
> 
> 
> >Now, as to the *problem*....
> >
> >Janet...did you run fsck -fy, or just fsck -f? The difference is important.
> >
> >Second...did you actually run diskwarrior on this machine by booting from a
> >CD? An aborted install can cause a lot of disk structure problems.
> >
> >The fact that it happens with new users indicates it's completely out of
> the
> >/Users realm.
> >
> >I would run a current version of Diskwarrior (at least 3.0, most current is
> >3.0.2) on the drive, from the DW CD and see if that does the trick.
> >
> >john
> >
> >--
> >Socks should match your pants, and your belt should match your shoes. After
> >that, if anyone complains, tell 'em they should be happy you're wearing any
> >clothes at all.
> >
> >
> >
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> 
> 

Regards,
Kerem
Kerem B. Limon
kerem.limon at mit.edu /e-mail