It all started with itunes...help
 

Ok, i'm not too mac savvy, this is my first mac so bare with me, please.

i'm uploading all my cd's into itunes and it's playing fine for months. starting yesterday, itunes starts locking up. i force quit out of the program and try opening it back up but get an error (-36) i believe. so, i try again, alas, the same error. I restart and now and it won't go past the screen with the apple and little circle, loading thingy...and stay's there. I've tried a few things based on another post and it didn't help. i've tried zapping the pram, pmu reset, removing the ram and restarting, restarting w/o the hd connected...nothing.

any ideas...is my hardrive screwed? i just hope i don't have to reformat and have to upload everything again...

PLEASE HELP!

First, boot to your OS X Full Install CD, go to the Installer pulldown menu, and select Disk Utility. When Disk Utility launches, select your boot volume on the left, go to the First Aid tab, and click the button "Repair Disk". If it finds any problems, re-run it until it gives your disk a clean bill of health.

Next, quit Disk Utility, restart the computer while holding in your mouse button. This will eject the CD and your computer will boot from the hard drive. See if it boots normally now.

If it doesn't, reboot and hold down command-v. This will give you a verbose startup, in other words instead of the gray screen, you'll get a Unix text screen with startup messages. Write down any of those messages that appear to be error messages, plus the last two or three messages no matter what they say. Then let us know what those are.

Trevor

update
 

Ok, I put the cd in and it dose the same thing...goes to the same screen.

from the verbose startup this is some of the stuff that comes up that looks like an error message:

disk0s5: 0x8 (undifined) -- this is what the last three lines were

dyld: consoleMessage can't open library: system/library/frameWorks/coreFoundation.framework/versions/a/coreFoundation (no such file or directory, error = 2)

mv: rename/private/temp to/privatel-tmp/tmp: input/output error

mkdir: /var/run: input/output error

chown: /var/run: no such file

mkdir /var/run: no such file

chown /var/run: no such file

Kern.symfile: input/output error

ln: /mach: input/output error

Did you hold down the C key ?
To boot from a CD, you insert the CD, then restart (via the power button if need be), then hold down the C key after you hear the chime. Keep holding the C key until you see something on screen.

Ok, I just did that and it goes to the loading screen (same screen) and just sits there. So what does that mean?

Try zapping the PRAM and resetting Open Firmware as explained here:
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
then try booting from the CD again.

By the way, what model of Mac is it and what version of OS is on the Install CDs?

yeah, i guess that info would be helpful, sorry. i believe it's the first gen. g4 and i'm running panther 10.3.

i've zapped the pram before and reset the firmware but i'll give it another shot...

thanks for the help man....

jboz, are you saying that the computer wont boot from the CD? if you put in the OSX panther CD1 and restart the machine while holding down the 'c' key then it should boot from the CD and you should see a OSX screen with a window in either welcoming you to panther or getting ready to install panther (i cant remember what it says exactly). If you go to the menu, you should be able to select disk utility (which again, runs off the CD). Use that to repair the hard disk. Then do a restart.

If that doesnt help, then try reinstalling the OS using the 'Archive and Install' option. This will keep all of your user settings intact, just making a new 'System' folder. That should fix things.

zapped the pram, reset open firmware and tried to reboot from the cd....same thing???

Is the disk ok? Maybe if its not bootable, the machine resorts back to booting off the hard disk?? can you check in a different machine?

ok, i just wasn't holding it down for long enough...

i'm running the disk repair now and it says:

KEYS OUT OF ORDER
REBUILDING CATEGORY B-TREE

if i remember rightly, you can boot your machine holding down the option (aka alt) key and it will present you with a screen where you can select different boot options (hard disk, cd etc).

a full list of key sequences are here:
http://davespicks.com/writing/progra...keys.html#boot

how about trying to get into single user mode? (im clutching at straws here)

ok, this doesn't look promising...

the first aid failed and here's the error i get:

Error: the underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)

Repair attempted on 1 volume
0 HFS volumes repaired
1 volume could not be repaired

so, what's my next step...reinstalling? will i lose all my music?

It looks like the OS is trying to boot off of Slice 5? Is this disk partitioned? I would figure out how to boot from Slice 3 .. Sorry, I have no idea on hoe to do this

1. Do you have TechTool Pro 4.0.3 or DiskWarrior 3.0.2? How about the Apple Hardware Test CD that was boxed with your Mac?
2. Check out posts #125, #126, and #127 on the 7th page of the "Generic Troubleshooting List" stuck to the top of the System forum above. Together they provide an excellent, step-by-step checklist, including such things as creating a new user account and seeing if the problems are still there when you boot in as the new user.
3. It might pay to download from Apple.com the 10.3.7 Combo Updater and run that. Some people who have had problems with 10.3.7 found them resolved after running the combo.
4. If you did have to do a re-installation from your Panther Installer set, opt for an archival installation, which will NOT erase. Then run the combo 10.3.7 updater.

Respectfully, Norm

You definitely should not install anything else on this machine until you fix the filesystem corruption. Since the problem is not fixable with Disk Utility, you need to either get a more powerful disk utility (e.g. DiskWarrior) or erase the disk and reinstall. If you don't have any backups, obviously the second solution is to be avoided. There is a chance that you might be able to just use "Carbon Copy Cloner" to clone your drive to an external firewire drive, erase your drive, then use CCC to clone it back from the external.

i didn't buy this mac, i traded some work for it so i don't have anything that came with it...so no apple hardware test cd, nor do i have any of the above specified disk utility software.

i only use this mac for my music and watching movies so i don't have anything really important on it....i'm just trying to keep from having to upload all that music again. it seems that it might be easier to do just that...upload everything again.

i'll try getting another utilities program and run that to see if it helps. if not, i'll just do the reinstall and start over:(

thanks everyone for the help and patience. even if i can't get it fixed, i've learned a little more about my mac...

thanks,
j

Well, you have the Install CD - that's the important one. But DiskWarrior is something you would need to buy so it's a question of whether your time is worth the amount it would cost.
And Carbon Copy Cloner is shareware so you can download it, buy an external firewire drive, and try the process I suggested above.

I still think that the Mac version of grub or lilo just needs to point to disk0s3 .. I'm new to Mac OS X .. Does anyone know if a Mac disk comes configured with a Slice 5 or does one need to partition to create it?

If it were me .. I would format the disk and do a clean install

well...i tried doing two things when reinstalling. i tried doing the archive one where it allows me to keep my old system and that gave me an error and told me to try to reinstall again. so i tried to reinstall again, this time clearing everything off the hard drive and reinstalling and it cleaned everything off the hard drive but it won't install the os. wtf? i don't seem to be having any luck with this. so, i have a new problem....i've got an empty hd that won't let me install my os. i'm thinking about shooting it...might make me feel better.

so...any ideas as to why it's not installing? i know the cd works because i used it to on this computer before. is the hard drive messed up?

Did you use it to install OS X before? Or just to run Disk Utility?
What type of CD is it? What does it say on the CD itself? Does it refer to a specific model of Mac?

Could it be that your drive needs cleaning? What is the error that you're getting? Do you have an external firewire CD drive to install with?

Again .. I think it's a partitioning error ... Your previous boot pointer was trying to boot off of Slice 5 .. You need to repoint it to Slice 3.

Can you append what Disk Utility -> Get Info displays for your disk?

Mine looks like:

Name : Macintosh HD
Type : Volume

Disk Identifier : disk0s3
Mount Point : /
File System : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Connection Bus : ATA
IO Content : Apple_HFS
Device Tree : first-boot/@0:3

forbin might have a good point - go to your install CD and run disk utility. then click on the 'Partition' tab and see if its been cut up at all... maybe there is an old OS9 partition sitting there somewhere?

if it has been partitioned, use disk utility to put it back into one partition, then reformat...

...good luck

ps. if you are talking about a G4 desktop machine, you could always open the case, put the drive into another mac (or even a PC) and see if you can partition / format that way... then at least you would know that the drive is ok...