I was able to boot in single user mode and was given the option of exiting or running fsck, so I chose the latter and typed what the message said: /sbin/fsck/ -fy
I got a few lines of output, which ended by saying: invalid index key (4, 7173) rebuilding catalog B-tree The volume MacHD could not be repaired I'm not sure what other commands to give in single user mode. If I power up in target disk mode, I'm not sure what to run. If I boot up from the install DVD, I could re-install if I get that far, but I did not try because I was afraid of getting the disk stuck in the optical drive and I was not very optimistic about a re-install helping if the disk is bad. Gregg On Oct 30, 2011, at 5:24 PM, Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [E] wrote: > Hi Steve, > > Thanks for the quick response. > > When I said that I could not boot from another drive, I meant that I still > had the flash drive in the USB slot (from loading Lion) and when I powered up > I held the command and option keys down, thinking I would get a window that > allowed me to choose what drive to boot from. Instead I just got the Apple > logo and the spinning icon, and then I got what looked like a firmware update > bar, and then the progress bar disappeared after only getting about 10% of > the way, and then the Apple logo and spinning icon stayed on the screen as > long as I waited (which was 30 minutes once, and only a few minutes the other > times). I assume that the disappearing progress bar is a bad sign. > > I did not try booting from the install DVD, or in single user mode, or > firewire target mode. I could try those now, though I'm not sure what to do > from single user mode or firewire target mode. Before the hang, I ran disk > utility and got errors that could not be fixed (by disk utility at least). > Is there some other software that might fix them? > > Thanks, > > Gregg > > On Oct 30, 2011, at 5:09 PM, [email protected] wrote: > >> on 2011-10-30 14:49 Gregg Dinse wrote >>> Can anyone interpret this for me? Is it likely a bad hard drive, >> >> yes, the logs do suggest that you have a corrupt fileysystem >> >>> or might it be some other hardware problem? >> >> yes, it could be something else; the failure to boot from another drive >> means >> that something other than the drive is bad, but you didn't say what you >> tried >> to boot from and how you are sure that should have worked >> >> if the firmware update were downloaded to a failing hard drive, one could >> imagine it seeming to download intact but then becoming corrupt during the >> update process; that would be bad >> >>> Is there anything I can try that might help fix or diagnose the problem? >> >> have you tried booting from an install DVD? do you have a hardware >> diagnostic DVD? >> >> tried firewire target mode? single-user mode (S)? >> >> _______________________________________________ >> MacOSX-talk mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
