The patient: Intel Mac Pro, three and a half years old, running OS 10.6.8, 300 GB startup disk with 160 GB free.
(Sigh) The patient was performing well yesterday afternoon until... I opened System Preferences and changed the Energy settings to 3 hours each (they had been set for shorter intervals. Then did a Restart. There was the usual startup chime, the pale grey screen with the apple, then a blue screen. There it remained. The little windmill cursor appeared at intervals and went away at intervals. The blue screen flickered a bit, like it really was trying to start up. Remedies I tried: Starting up holding the S key - no change. Starting up holding the C key (the external backup disk, not Time Machine, was attached - it is supposed to be bootable) - no change. Starting up holding the option key (there is a Bootcamp partition). Yes, I can boot into windows. (Arrrgghhh). While in windows, I opened the cd tray and put the Snow Leopard disk in, then tried a restart holding the C key again. Used the SL disk to repair permissions - there were only about a dozen repairs, all having to do with System/Core Services/ Remote Management. Also clicked Repair Disk. The message said the disk was OK. Tried another restart - no change. Started up on the SL disk again, repaired permissions again - the same items were 'repaired.' Used an old laptop to access Apple support, worked through the Express Lane. Resetting the SMC sounded promising, so I went through the steps of that, but no change. That was a far as I could go with Express Lane without paying for a phone consultation. Unfortunately, I don't have a current copy of Disk Warrior, or I would have tried that. So I am really hoping WAMUG members can help. Pat -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
