I’ve been gettin major “pinwheel action” on my iBook G4 running OSX. It’s been freezing up.
I repaired permissions not to long ago, but now when I try it starts to do it but then it says, “Disk Utility has lost connection to Disk Management tool. Quit Disk Utility and try again.”
That doesn’t seem like a good sign.
What is going on, and what should I do? Thanks in advance for your help!
Boot from your install disc and run Disk Utility from there.
What OSX are you using? have you up graded fror 10.3.X to 10.4.X? If so are you using the 10.4 disk to repair permissions? If you have any perpherials connected, disconnect them.(That’s according to * OSX: The Missing Manual*) Be sure you run DiskFirstAid as well as repairing permissions.
That’s all I have.
This worked for me:
What bullshit. After I did that “upgrade” I also lost my internet connection in my house, got it at my office, and had it at my house later. Grrr.
What is the difference, and where is the DiskFirstAid app to be found?
Thanks.
DiskFirstAid is an old name. Everything’s in the ‘Disk Utility’ application nowadays. Permissions repair and Disk repair now appear as separate buttons under the ‘First Aid’ tab of ‘Disk Utility’. Disk repair will not run on active the boot partition, so you need to boot off the CD, or another drive or partition to run it on your regular boot disk.
Right…Old habits die hard, sorry.
Mac users like to claim that Mac is so stable. Well… Safari crashes pretty regularly, I get a weird striped screen now and then, other applications crash. And my first iBook G4 motherboard died on me after one month of use (replaced under warranty, but what an incredible pain that was).
Now this slowing down and freezing without any real explanation. Almost makes me long for a Windows machine. And that’s sad.
When are we finally going to get computers that don’t require daily hand-holding?
A lot of people don’t have good things to say about Norton Disk Doctor, but I’ve used it regularly for years and have managed to catch a lot of little problems before they became big problems. You might want to pick up the latest version of Norton Utilities and give it a go. Back up EVERYTHING that you don’t want to lose beforehand, then boot from the Norton CD. The diagnose/repair process may take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours on an OSX system, depending on how much you’ve got on your HD, so make sure you’ve got some time when you won’t be needing your computer for awhile. If something Bad happens, you’ve at least got your data backed up; Utilities also has a Volume Recover feature that may be able to get you back lost files.
Hmmm… something’s wrong. Nothing ever crashes my Macs. Well, some bad NSF configuration caused a kernel panic a couple of releases ago, but really, the OS is solid. Some websites occassionally crash Safari, but you know what? On Windows an IE crash will often take the whole OS with it (not as much with XP these days, though). And hardware wise, I’ve had my problems, but that happens with every manufacturer – parts are outsourced to the same jobshops, after all. No, the Mac is stable because of the tight integration between the custom hardware and software. That’s a fact, and a little Google-foo will be my cite. 
Now, on to your problem: you probably have a bad hard drive. Happened to my poor (now dead) G4 PowerBook, and it exhibited all of the same, nasty symptoms. The laptop drives aren’t SMART drives, and they don’t seem to automatically remap their bad sectors. The I/O system tries and tries and tries to read the bad sector, which is better than a Windows style error message when it only tries once, but not as good because you don’t know what’s going on (yeah, there should be some happy medium).
If you think the hard drive is going, you might want to download SMARTReporter to double check. It’s free, and has some good reviews.
This reviewer comment in particular should be of interest, given the problems you’ve been having.
Thanks for this advice!
I ran the software and it said my drive is OK. This problem is driving me nuts!
My first step would be to zap PRAM, boot in single-user mode (command-s) and type:
fsck -fy
This will repair the disk…
Then insert your OS X install disk - Tiger, I imagine, right?
Hold down D (or is it C? I always get it twisted) to boot from the CD, and you will automatically boot into the OS X installer. If you go to the File menu you’ll see Disk Utility. You should be able to run Disk Utility there.
I really advise against using Norton. Since OS X came out, all I’ve heard (and experienced) is bad stuff. Installs weird stuff, hoses your OS, etc. A much better investment is DiskWarrior, which will rebuild your disk directory on your boot disk when you boot from the CD. This often fixes all kinds of weirdness. Another one you might want to look into is TechTool Pro. But try the simpler, free fixes first and see where that gets you.
For a great place with Mac heads all around to help you, go to discussions.apple.com and either search with your symptoms or ask a question. There’s a guy called Dr. Smoke who is really good that has an FAQ somewhere. Be prepared to spit out all of your Mac’s stats - memory, OS, when the problem started, etc.
[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]
My first step would be to zap PRAM, boot in single-user mode (command-s) and type:
fsck -fy
This will repair the disk…
[quote]
Thanks. What does “zap PRAM, boot in single-user mode” mean?
Hold down shift, isn’t it? In any case, I know how to do this. Thank you.
Wow, and I thought Mac was supposed to be a cake-walk. Disillusionment hurts. I thank you very much for your help.
It’s C. Shift will start you in safe mode, C lets you choose between startup disks at login.
Well…. close. Shift starts without kernel extensions enabled – which is in a vague sort of way a safe-ish mode. C boots from the built-in CD and maybe will scan external CD’s (where CD can be DVD as well). Booting with option allows you to lets you choose between startup disks.
As for the Intel Macs, I’m assuming this is the same, but who knows. No, really… who does know?
Also, check out your System Profiler to look at your hard drive information – I was certain that iBooks didn’t have SMART-capable drives. After all, if my fancy-shmancy PowerBook didn’t have a SMART drive, why would a lowly iBook? 
We wouldn’t want you having misplaced confidence in SMARTreporter.
OK, I zapped PRAM (I’m curious as to what this does).
Then I had two of the slowest boots of my life. I had to to a hard reset each time.
I then noticed that the hard drive was making the same sound over and over. I lifted up the Mac, and the sound changed. Then things seemed to snap into place with lightning speed.
Could my hard drive be about to go to shit? Could this be a warning sign?
Or could zapping the PRAM have screwed up the two boots?
Before I did all that, I had a great 5-6 hours today of Mac use. Then I got another total freeze. Man, this is really frustrating.
Your further advice on the above will be much appreciated.
My hard drive is a TOSHIBA MK4025GAS.
Any thoughts?
Aeschines, being an old Mac user I zap the PRAM whenever it does weird stuff.
Turns out it doesn’t do a whole lot:
The sound, especially, indicates to me that your HD is about to die. I’ve had a number of disk failures over the years, and the times when it actually gave me a warning, that’s exactly what I heard - weirdness louder than usual from the drive.
If you’re able to boot it again, transfer important documents to a CD or a jump drive. Applications you likely have the original disks, so don’t worry about that. The next step I would take would be in the direction of a Apple repair center. (Do you have AppleCare?)
Did you try to boot in single user mode - command + s - and fsck -yf ?