# blue screen on mac? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 15, 2012, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130 "2012-11-15T21:31:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![blegium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f9ae1b/32.png) [@blegium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blegium)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2012, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/1 "2012-11-15T21:31:00Z")
Hello everyone, I’m from belgium and have a problem of full startup disk message and a blue screen for not being able to do anything. I found an earlier message on this board explaining how to enter into the system by holding cmd and S key which I did well. I then wrote the command as instructed /sbin/mount -uw / and have had the list of info but on the application list it’s written “private” which means that I cannot rm any application to free memory space to be able to recover my computer. Can someone help me pls? I’m not a computer specialist but I can follow instruction. thank you ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2012, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/2 "2012-11-15T21:43:25Z")
First of all, don’t remove anything in /Applications. Remove some music, image, or video files. You will find them in /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Pictures or /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Music or /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Movies. You also might want to delete anything in the trash - /Users/YOURUSERNAME/.Trash rm any files in there. ---
**Author:** ![DavidPeab](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/54ee81/32.png) [@DavidPeab](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidPeab)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2012, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/3 "2012-11-15T22:03:25Z")
Back-up stuff you want to keep like music and movies. You could also try using Time Machine to restore the system to before the problem occurred. ---
**Author:** ![blegium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f9ae1b/32.png) [@blegium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blegium)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2012, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/4 "2012-11-15T22:54:26Z")
hello, thank you for your mail but the blue screen problem doens’t allow me to go into Finder to be able to enter in any file. I have thus to enter into the os while loggin in but at the line application it’s written ‘private’ thus i don’t know how to bypass that to be able to erase any application form os. tks ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2012, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/5 "2012-11-15T23:00:43Z")
> [@blegium](#): > > hello, > thank you for your mail but the blue screen problem doens’t allow me to go into Finder to be able to enter in any file. I have thus to enter into the os while loggin in but at the line application it’s written ‘private’ thus i don’t know how to bypass that to be able to erase any application form os. > > tks I don’t know what you mean by “private.” When you are booted into Single-User mode, you have root privileges. There’s nothing you can’t do. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2012, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/6 "2012-11-15T23:04:19Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > I don’t know what you mean by “private.” > When you are booted into Single-User mode, you have root privileges. There’s nothing you can’t do. and nothing you can’t destroy! Be careful. rm only files you recognize and files you know you can lose. I am frankly not familiar with “blue screen” on a Mac. Has he filled his boot volume? Why not just boot from the DVD and deal with the disk in the normal manner? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2012, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/7 "2012-11-15T23:13:48Z")
> [@rbroome](#): > > and nothing you can’t destroy! Be careful. > rm only files you recognize and files you know you can lose. > > I am frankly not familiar with “blue screen” on a Mac. > Has he filled his boot volume? > Why not just boot from the DVD and deal with the disk in the normal manner? Yes, he’s filled up his disk, so the OS can’t even load the Finder. If he had access to another Mac, he could mount this one using FireWire target mode, and delete files from the Finder, but it seems that isn’t an option. Even booting from the DVD won’t help - no Finder access. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2012, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/8 "2012-11-15T23:19:47Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Yes, he’s filled up his disk, so the OS can’t even load the Finder. > > If he had access to another Mac, he could mount this one using FireWire target mode, and delete files from the Finder, but it seems that isn’t an option. Even booting from the DVD won’t help - no Finder access. Booting from the DVD will work fine. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2012, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/9 "2012-11-15T23:35:23Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > Booting from the DVD will work fine. To do what? He still needs to use the Terminal. ---
**Author:** ![blegium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f9ae1b/32.png) [@blegium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blegium)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/10 "2012-11-16T00:38:00Z")
it’s late night here and no terminal. booting from dvd doesnt work i entered os and typed: /sbin/mount -uw / ls then should have appeared the list of application ready to erase but instead its wriiten ‘private’ and non list appears as if it was maybe protected? and unerasable. that’s the problem but i’m not a specialist tks marc ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/11 "2012-11-16T01:24:53Z")
Again, you do not want to erase any of your applications. You want to erase other files. And you do have a terminal; the place where you typed that command _is_ a terminal. What you want to do is type cd /Users/\ This will change your working directory to your user directory. If you don’t remember what your user name is, just type cd /Users/ and then ls to get a list of all of the user directories, and then cd to the correct one. OK, so now you’re in your user directory. Everything there should be safe to delete (i.e., it won’t screw up your computer if you do so). Some things you might want to keep, but you’ll have to judge that for yourself: You should be able to recognize the filenames. To see a listing of everything in that directory, type ls -l (that’s a space, a minus sign, and a lower-case letter ell) to see the file name, size, and other information for all of the files in that directory. There will also be some subdirectories; you can change to any of them by typing cd \ When you find some files you want to delete, use the rm command to delete them: rm \ If there are a whole bunch of files you want to delete with similar names, you can use a \* in the filename you want to delete. For instance, rm \*.jpg will delete all .jpg files in that directory. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/12 "2012-11-16T01:43:09Z")
There is a directory called ‘private’ in the root of the hard drive. It’s where the etc and var directories among others are on a Mac. It’s normally hidden from Finder. I think that is what **blegium** is seeing. It might be helpful to point out that in addition to what **Chronos** said, if a file has a space in its name you’ll need to put quotes around it, or the system will see the space as a separator. That is, if you type: rm My Great Song.mp3 It will try to remove a file called My, a file called Great and a file called Song.mp3. Instead type: rm “My Great Song.mp3” ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/13 "2012-11-16T06:16:29Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > To do what? > He still needs to use the Terminal. You don’t need to use the terminal. The boot DVD has Disk Utility on it which will mount the HD and then you can delete stuff to your heart’s content. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/14 "2012-11-16T13:01:48Z")
Disk Utility will erase the whole drive, but not just individual files. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/15 "2012-11-16T18:23:58Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > You don’t need to use the terminal. The boot DVD has Disk Utility on it which will mount the HD and then you can delete stuff to your heart’s content. Sorry, but this is not the case. Try it. ---
**Author:** ![blegium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f9ae1b/32.png) [@blegium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blegium)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/16 "2012-11-16T21:18:29Z")
hello everyone, Many thanks for all the information you’ve sent me. I succeeded in entering into my documents with the commands you gave me but I have now another problem, it is that when I try to erase any of the file, it’s telling me it’s a read only file system, for docs, pdf, dmg or any file! Although I’m in root files are listed as rw-r-- 1 501 etc…;, my brother told me that I should have my name or root written instead of 501??? Someone could help me how could I bypass this for being able to erase a file? tks ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/17 "2012-11-16T22:00:21Z")
Are you sure you did a “/sbin/mount -uw /”? Sounds like your disk is mounted as read-only. ---
**Author:** ![blegium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f9ae1b/32.png) [@blegium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blegium)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/18 "2012-11-16T22:14:02Z")
yes I did, and yes it seems that the disk is read only but how could I change that? can I?could I ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/19 "2012-11-16T22:31:36Z")
> [@blegium](#): > > yes I did, and yes it seems that the disk is read only but how could I change that? can I?could I That’s what “/sbin/mount -uw /” does. Are you getting an error after you issue this command? What OS (10.x) is your machine running? ---
**Author:** ![blegium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f9ae1b/32.png) [@blegium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blegium)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130/20 "2012-11-16T23:57:36Z")
hello , no I don’t have any error message. My mac OS 10.6.8 tks [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blue-screen-on-mac/641130.md?page=2)