my imac is stuck on booting up

[Gordon]

i know nothing about computers, so this may be obvious.

i (actually some friends of mine) turned my imac (os 10.2) off at the wall without shutting it down. now when i boot it up its stuck on 'waiting for local drives' and has been for about 2 hours.

thing is, i can't find my osx install disk, or anything and basically i'm stuck.

any help would be appreciated


cheers in advance

[Gordon]

i did that fsck -y thing and it said my hard drive was ok

i can't get the tray to open to put a cd in.

please dont tell me its knackered. i woke up today happy, looking at all my valentines cards and i'm in a foul mood cause of a computer.....

[reeserv]

Try zapping the PRAM. Hold down the Command, option, P, R keys at startup and let it chime at least two times. You may have to reset your time and network settings afterwards.

[Gordon]

thanks anyway, but no joy. it just gets stuck on the screen with the little clock thingy. and then when i let go of the keys it boots up and gets stuck saying 'waiting for local disks'.

[cameranerd74]

You tired resetting the PRAM, let's try this... boot the machine while holding down the Command-Option-O-F keys. Your machine will boot to a gray screen with a command prompt. Type these commands:

reset-nvram (press return)
reset-all (press-return)

The machine should reboot. If it still doesn't boot up, you'll have to try a Disk Utility. Like Norton, DiskWarrior, or TechTool. I recommend DiskWarrior, but I've seen all of them work. To get your CD tray open, hold down the eject key (or the press and hold the mouse button) at startup. I've seen things like this happen before, and in more cases than not, the data was recovered. Even if you don't have a Utility CD, you could try to boot from an OS install or Hardware Test CD, to rule out hardware. Good Luck.

[hayne]

Please give a bit more detail about what you are doing and what happens, then there is a better chance we can help.

E.g. I assume that you started in single-user mode in order to do the 'fsck -y'. It would be a good idea to do that again.

And when you held down the 4 keys to reset the PRAM, did you hear the chimes twice?

I'm not sure what you mean by the "clock thingy" - maybe you mean the gray circle with rotating lines?

[Gordon]

i tried resetting the PRAM settings, and it rebooted, but it only got as far as 'waiting for local disks' as was happening previously.

it didn't chime at all when i reset the PRAM

the grey circle and rotating lines is the thing i'm talking about. it stays on that for quite a long time (longer that it would normally)

as for the fsck-y - i just help down apple and 's' and it said. 'The vol mac hd appears to be ok

[hayne]

Quote: Originally posted by Gordon it didn't chime at all when i reset the PRAM

If it doesn't chime then it's not resetting the PRAM. Are you sure you are holding down all 4 keys? See this Apple article about resetting the PRAM:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

[cameranerd74]

If it didn't chime twice, you didn't sucessfully reset the PRAM, try my suggestion above and let us know what happens. Hold down the key combination immediately after you press the power button.

[cameranerd74]

WOW hayne. Check the post times. Great minds.

[Gordon]

just done it again. it did chime. however, it's still stuck on 'waiting for local disks' :-(

[schneb]

May I "chime" in to help ol' Gordon?

What you want to do is get your Mac down to its lowest common denominator. That is, anything that is plugged into your Mac, your modem, any USB or Firewire or Ethernet--unplug them. (That is, everything except your mouse and keyboard.)

Shut down your Mac and unplug your it from the power outlet. Leave it unplugged for about a minute. If you have a reset button, press it. Plug it back in and push your start button.

It would help if you had your install CDs, oh well.

Let us know what happens when you do this.

[Gordon]

you star.

its fixed. why didn't i think of thAT?

i was so annoyed this morning that i was about to post an eight page tirade against my computer because i thought i had lost a significant amount of work. i guess its time to considering backing up my stuff. something i have never considered, nor done.

thank you for all your help and particularly to schneb for offering common sense against my fear of technical complexity.

i'm so happy now....

[anthlover]

Yes everyone should back up... Multiple Backups to Multiple media is best...

One of the best ways is an external FW drive where you can keep multliple bootable backups. 80 and 120 gig drives are widely available in a FW case for like $125.

I like Carbon Copy Cloner. There are many choices. Some External FW Drives come with their own back up programs.

CDs and DVDs are good ways to back up limited portions of Data but necessarily whole systems as they are usually require more then a few to do the job.


And I will second a vote for Disk Warrior X. You probably still have some directory damage that needs repairing. It is just that Apple' s built in repair got far enough to allow you to boot.

[schneb]

So glad I was able to make someone's day. We have an older G4 here at work that sometimes gets into this stuck blackhole-zone. It is very scary, but now I have come to just relax and say, "Oh, that old behavior again." Before I sold my iBook (one of the originals) I had the same problem. The reset button came in real handy.

PCs have something that Macs do not, a hard switch. I think it is about time Apple start installing one of those pups. For now, we need to crouch on all fours under the desk.

You have now received an official warning notice, back up your work on both CD and external drive. I have a G4 iMac that I use at home. However, ALL my files, photos, Bible studies, writings, music and media for all my projects, go on the Firewire LaCie drive. I back up everything on DVD-R, just in case!