Harry, The symptoms -- will boot in safe mode, won't boot in regular mode -- suggest (to me, anyway) that the problem is not that the drive hardware is shot but that some piece of software, presumably part of the operating system, is missing or corrupt.
I'm hoping someone knows the order of the boot process well enough to recommend disabling or deleting certain preference files that might be culpable. For example, if I knew that the brief interval between the spinning cog and the first appearance of the cursor was when the OS checked, say, network settings, I could concentrate my search for system software culprits in the area network-related prefs. However, now I've made matters worse, as I often do in my trial-and-error efforts to fix things. I noticed that after restoring from Time Machine I had a new folder in my MBP hard drive's root directory: a folder named "private". Inside that folder were several other folders with names like "tmp", "prefs" (those aren't actual, but names like that that sounded like heavy-duty system stuff). Any halfway intelligent person would know better than to mess with something called "private" but to me that's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I trashed that folder to see what would happen. (But I did not empty the trash, knowing that I might want to retrieve that folder later.) Big mistake. Now I can't boot even in safe mode. It hangs at the spinning cog. Thus my new question: Anyone know how to retrieve files placed in trash but not emptied on a volume that can't be booted to? I can boot from an external hard drive and see all the files on my MBP hard drive, but can't find that "private" folder or one called .Trash -- and yes I have used the option to find invisible files. If I could find that folder I would move it (and files within it) back to the root directory and I suspect I would be at least back to being able to safe boot. It's rather a pain to go through these kinds of messes, but I must say I do find them enormously instructive in the end. Dan Crutcher On Aug 14, 2010, at 10:26 AM, Harry Jacobson-Beyer <[email protected]> wrote: > How about a new hard drive? > > Saturday, August 14, 201010:14 AMDan [email protected] > >> Yesterday the hard drive on my MacBook Pro went AWOL -- directory >> scrambled so badly that Disk Utility couldn't repair it, hard drive >> volume wasn't being mounted, no drive found at startup, etc. But drive >> was visible in Disk Utility and I was able to re-partition it and >> restore from my Time Machine backup of the night before. >> >> After restoration, all files and apps and system seem to be in place, >> but I can't boot up in anything other than safe mode (shift-boot). If I >> try a regular start up, not holding down any keys, it displays the gray >> screen with the apple and the spinning "cog" for a while and then goes >> to an all-blue screen and hangs there. If I safe boot, I get a normal >> start up, but of course without extensions loaded. >> >> I've tried the usual fixes: zapping pram, repairing permissions, >> verifying the disk, etc., but still get this blue-screen hang on a >> normal boot. Anyone have any suggestions for fixing this? Does anyone >> know exactly what's going on in the system boot process at the time that >> the blue screen appears? (In a normal boot the blue screen only displays >> for a second or two, then the cursor appears, then the desktop. In my >> case I get the blue screen and never get to the cursor.) >> >> Thanks. >> >> Dan >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> MacGroup mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup >> > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > MacGroup mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup > > _______________________________________________ MacGroup mailing list [email protected] http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup
