Re: mbp not booting, the story so far and a plea for help

[Tim Kilburn]

Scott,

Yes, it is version 4 that I use.  You can download it from the vender  
right away so you don't have to wait for the Cd to arrive.  If you  
decide to give it a try, let me know and I'll give you some tips that  
should help.  It's actually a very quick process once it starts and  
well worth the cash in my mind.

Later...

On 24-Dec-08, at 8:45 AM, Scott Chesworth wrote:

yup, doesn't look like archive and install is gonna be a choice here
because the leopard installer doesn't even give me macintosh hd as an
option to install onto.  ugh!

I guess I'm gonna have to stump up the cash for disk warrior from
somewhere.  Tim, the accessibility issues you mentioned, was that
using version 4 out of interest?  I can get a set of eyes on this over
christmas if needs be, but it pains me to put down that much cash for
software that I can't use.  If it's the only way, so be it.

Cheers
Scott

On 12/24/08, David Poehlman  
<david.poehl...@handsontechnologeyes.com> wrote:
Ah, I remember, when this happened to my macbook, I could not install
at all.

On Dec 24, 2008, at 10:25 AM, David Poehlman wrote:

also, remember that if you perform an archive and install, your data
will not be lost.

On Dec 24, 2008, at 10:12 AM, Scott Chesworth wrote:

Hi David - this all sounds like its worth a shot.  I'm a complete
terminal rookie though, so is there any chance you could mail me over
the commands I'd need to mount disks and move files?  Archive and
install is something I haven't tried yet, I guess I could use that to
archive to my external hd and work on getting the data out once the
mbp is back up and running right?

cheers
Scott

On 12/24/08, David Poehlman <david.poehl...@handsontechnologeyes.com>
wrote:
if you can get the hd mounted from terminal, you should be able to
move the data.  Then, it should be possible to do an erace-install.
it might even be possible to do an archive and install by booting  
from
the leopard dvd.

On Dec 24, 2008, at 8:57 AM, Scott Chesworth wrote:

Hey folks, I have here one very unhappy macbook pro, hopefully  
someone
on here has ideas that I haven't yet tried to get him back on his
feet.

So the other day, I boot the mbp up, get the usual chime sound, the
apple logo comes up, stays there for a minute or so, and the mbp  
turns
straight back off.  "not good" says I.  I can't think of anything  
I've
installed or changed lately to cause this.  I've tried holding  
option
and forcing it to boot from macintosh HD with the same result,  
holding
shift key for safe mode with the same result, holding s for single
user mode with - you guessed it - the same result.  I've booted from
my Leopard DVD and tried varifying and repairing the volume from  
Disk
Utility there.  In both cases, I get an error that says "filesystem
varify or repair failed", and ocasionally I get a "the underlying  
task
has failed" instead... uh oh!  Some frantic Googling later, I found
myself in terminal trying to repair the volume with fsck_hfs because
it seems some folks have had more luck this way, but no joy.   
Terminal
does give me messages about an invalid sibbling link though  
sometimes,
which while it isn't what I want to hear, at least it's something a
bit more specific.

If anyone has any thoughts, they'd be so worth a shot.  I've got 100
GB or so of data on this thing that isn't backed up (yep,  
apparently I
can be that stupid).  I have space on an external drive that I just
picked up, if I can only figure out a way to get the data off and go
for a clean install.

TIA
Scott















Tim Kilburn
& Carter the Canine
Fort McMurray, AB Canada