I've been running X (10.3.8 now) trouble-free for months, but today I decided to change the cables on my video converter box (which I use to feed analog video into Final Cut), and I thought it would be safer to shut down the computer before switching FireWire or video cables on the box (I especially worry about switching FW cables hot). So I chose Shut Down and waited for the Mac to shut down. The monitor screen turned blank-blue as it usually does during shutdown, but then it just hung there, frozen. No shut-down.
After waiting awhile, I decided to go ahead and shut the Mac down the rest of the way by just hitting the Off button on my APS power backup, which cuts off the power to the Mac. Dumb! Doing that apparently broke OS-X! (Unless it was already broken when the shutdown screen froze). Now when I try to start up the Mac, instead of going to the OS-X desktop, it goes to a login box with my name on it, but only for a couple of seconds. Then that box vanishes and I get a blue screen with a terminal command line in the upper left corner: a login prompt asking for name and password. So I give it those, and I get "Welcome to Darwin!" Who's Darwin? Charles Darwin the naturalist? Anyway there sits the prompter or whatever it is waiting for commands, and I don't know any commands to give. The only command I know is "exit," which starts the whole broken startup thing over again: the glimpse of a login box followed by the terminal command lines asking for name and password again. I looked into Pogue's OS-X book for help, and he says to boot into single user mode in such a situation and type in fsck -y to get a repair routine running. So I did that, and I get "Checking HFS Plus Volume Invalid number of allocation blocks (-1,0) **volume check failed" Hitting exit from there takes me right back to "Welcome to Darwin" again. A vicious circle! No way out! Pogue suggests that when everything else fails like this, reinstall OS-X. So I put my OS-X CD in the superdrive (Pioneer 107) and restart while holding down the C key, but it hangs at the gray screen with the apple on it. I have to force a restart. Fortunately this is a dual-boot G4 (733 DA), so I can drop back into OS 9.2.2 by re-starting and holding down the D key. That gives me the OS-9 desktop (and I am sending this cry for help to the G-list from it) and I can see all my drive icons, and open them up to see that everything on them is present and accounted for (three internal and IDE three external FireWire drives), and the OS-X System folder is sitting there on one of the drives as normal. While on the OS-9 desktop, if I choose the OS-X Install disk as the startup disk, and restart, all it does is hang again at the gray screenfd, and I have to force a restart. So, I'm stuck! I can't get my OS-X desktop back, and I can't reinstall OS-X either! What do I do now? Tom Art website at http://www.ThomasBakerPaintings.com Archaeology website at http://www.nmia.com/~jaybird/AANewsletter/ -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[email protected]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
