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pavement07 · Oct 10, 2007 , 03:53 AM

so, I bought my black MacBook last year. I'm running Mac OS X and with bootcamp, I bifurcated my HD so I can re-boot and run Windows XP. Last night, my computer just crashed while I was running Windows (of course), and my computer shut down and automatically restarted. However, my screen had all of these weird colors and text. So, I restarted the computer to no avail. A blinking ? Mark appears and when I try to re-install the MacBook install disk, the computer doesn't recognize any of the HDs, neither the OS X, nor Windows XP! Has anyone ever ran into this problem? If so, any recommended fixes? Please help! I'm desperate.... Thanks in advance!

AgileHosting · Oct 10, 2007 , 05:22 AM

I am in the process of tracking down a very similar case... on 3 computers all of which did this within 12 hours of each other... 2 of the computers are iMacs owned by my dentist. The 3rd is my MacBook.

All are Intel based computers, all have Parallels installed (but my laptop does NOT have Windows installed on it yet), all are running OS X 10.4.10

Can you confirm, does your MacBook also share those characteristics? Particularly the OS version.

My laptop is only 3 months old and I have been performing maintenance on it religiously. It's a brand new computer. I can't believe the drive just randomly failed... and two of my dentist's iMacs went down at the same time with identical symptoms? That's way too convenient to be coincidence, IMO...........

Once I figure out how to get my data back

(my local Apple tech called yesterday with a few suggestions & things to check for) I will come back with a step-by-step for diagnostics. Give me a little time though, I have 40 GB of data to rescue!!

Bailey

pavement07 · Oct 10, 2007 , 06:27 AM

yes, the same characteristics! Keep me posted on any information you gather!

Cold Warrior · Oct 10, 2007 , 09:05 AM

You can't boot at all from the OS X install/restore disc? Insert the disc and hold down the 'c' key when you hear the chime. If that doesn't work, you can try resetting PRAM and PMU, just to cover the standard bases.

Can you boot into single-user mode (holding down Apple-s at startup?

pavement07 · Oct 10, 2007 , 09:31 AM

unfortunately, no to all of your questions.

Cold Warrior · Oct 10, 2007 , 09:36 AM

damn, that's bad. Make sure peripherals are unplugged, like printers, external drives, etc.

AgileHosting · Oct 11, 2007 , 07:02 AM

Unfortunately, I have nothing but bad news so far.

I bought Disk Warrior and FileRecovery, and was able to recover NO FILES via either. I am losing 30 GB of data, including the draft of my book, and Gigs of photos...... breaks my heart. But nothing sees the drive in order to be able to recover anything from it.

Here's what I tried. Be sure to try each just in case.

They are in no particular order.

Force shut down by holding down the power button for 10 seconds.

Run a "diagnostic startup" (my term) by holding down the power button for 10 seconds at startup. I found that I had a long steady light, followed by rapid flash, and a DOS-like sounding beep. Whatever that means. (Will run that past my local Apple Tech today)

Reset the PMU. Instructions for many models of Macs here: Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit (PMU)

Zap the PRAM (Apple - Opt - P - R at startup)

Try to boot into single-user mode. (At startup, hit the power button to start up, and immediately follow by holding down Apple - S). After some period of time (not sure how long it might take - it never came up for me) a command-line interface should come up. If you can get it to boot into this mode, type:

Code:

/sbin/fsck -fy

Keep typing that until you get an "OK" printout. It might take several runs. Then type

Code:

reboot

The computer will reboot, and with any luck your life is golden.

Boot up using your OS CD. There are two ways to do this:
(a) Insert the CD-ROM and boot up holding down the C key. Theoretically the computer should boot up using the CD right away. (This didn't work for me)

(b) Insert the CD-ROM and power up the laptop. Let it sit there with a gray screen. After several minutes it should figure out there is a CD in the drive, and boot up from that. Patience is a virtue.

Once you are booted on the OS CD, start up Disk Utility. In Disk Utility, select your hard drve.
(a) First Aid > click Verify Disk. Note any errors you receive. I received "Invalid B-Tree node size; Volume check failed. Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit. Volume needs repair."

(b) First Aid > click Repair Disk. Note any errors you receive. I received "Invalid B-Tree node size; Volume check failed. Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit. 1 volume could not be checked because of an error."

Migration Assistant -- Since I still wanted to recover my data, my certified Apple Tech suggested booting the laptop up in target mode, and then using the Migration Assistant to copy my files over. In my case, Migration Assistant reports, "Waiting for disks to appear." Since my disk is unmountable, it never appears. Bummer. More info on Target Mode forthcoming...

Disk Warrior -- I popped for Disk Warrior (highly recommended by users on this forum with symptoms similar to mine) and fired up the laptop in Target Mode. Target Mode is where you slave the laptop to another Mac. I have a Mini here, so I drove 60 miles to find an A-A Firewire cable and embarked upon my project.

Boot up Laptop in Target Mode. To do this:
(a) Host system can already be running.

(b) Plug in firewire cable to both computers.

(c) Start up slave/broken computer with power button, and hit the T key. You may need to hold it for several long minutes. The firewire logo should eventually appear on the slave machine. It is really big and looks a lot like a screensaver.

(d) After some time (may take 5+ minutes) any mountable volumes on the slave system should auto-mount onto the host machine's finder. (In my case, since the hard drive in the laptop was unmountable, it never mounted in the host computer's finder)

While the laptop was in Target Mode, I tried a neat little app called FileRecovery. Unfortunately, and embarrassingly, I misread the available disks' addresses, and confused /dev/disk1s2 (dead disk) with /dev/disk0s2 (internal drive in the Mini on which app was running). I then proceeded to recover all the files on my Mini. Duh!! Alas, FileRecovery was NOT able to see my dead drive, thus it was another $80 wasted.

Dawn arrived and I gave up. I've been working on this 36 straight hours now. I decided to simply reformat the drive and do a fresh OS install.

The problem is, when I start up the installer, after agreeing to the license, I am prompted to select a destination volume to install the OS on. No disks appear! Crap.

So I went back and attempted to both repartition the drive (with 1 Partition). It exited with an error -- unable to complete.

I attempted to erase the drive the standard way (where no data is actually erased) -- it exited with an error, unable to complete.

Then I swallowed my soul

and hit "zero out" the drive, which would overwrite all data with zeros. That did complete successfully, or at least, I received no errors!

Now I went back and tried to set up the laptop with 1 Partition again. That ran with no errors!

Thinking I was on to something awesome, I now went to First Aid > Verify Disk........ ha ha ha fool! Invalid B-tree node size error came back. Disk is unrepairable.

So, I going to be taking this worthless, useless, infuriating POS to my local Apple Tech 90 miles away, to have him poke and bang on it. At this point I don't even care very much that I have lost 30 GB of data. I just want a working laptop again.

So there are my

findings.

If my wonder-Tech is able to recover anything, I will let you know. He lets me watch him as he works on my computers

(how cool is that?) and teaches me how to do things as he goes. So if I pick up any tricks I will report them back here.

Good luck!!

Bailey

AgileHosting · Oct 11, 2007 , 07:08 AM

Oh....... and I see the dentist today, Step 1 of a root canal *shudder* ........ will do some diagnostics on her two iMacs to see what's going on, and report back on those two as well, just for grins. Never know when a clue might pop up somewhere!

Bailey

pavement07 · Oct 15, 2007 , 02:58 AM

just found out from the apple tech that my HD had a mechical failure and is out of commission. The tech ordered a new drive from apple (fortunately, I have apple care and the new drive is free), but I'm losing all of my data. I'm bummed that my drive died in one year. Seems like a pretty short lifespan for a new MacBook. Thanks for keeping me posted. Interested in heaering about what you learn from the tech guy and your dentist's issues/resolutions. Mike

AgileHosting · Oct 18, 2007 , 11:16 AM

Update: All drives considered failed by Apple; all are being replaced under warranty by Apple.

I have lost all of my data. I am absolutely heartbroken about my photos............. the Apple certified tech tried to access my data and his utilities/methods were unable to so much as see the drive, as well.

Apple is apparently out of stock on drives, my replacement 80 GB has been on order since Monday, October 8th (10 days and counting) with no projected date on when they might be back in or ship. The repair place very kindly loaned me a drive to get my laptop up & running until the replacement arrives.

How nice is that!!

I am also getting .Mac so I can use iBackup. I am using the trial version now and really like it. Maybe if I had had some braindead utility like that which would have done backups on a schedule, I wouldn't be choking back the vomit every time I think about the pics from this summer that I lost.

Bailey

Cold Warrior · Oct 18, 2007 , 11:22 AM

did you email the pics to anyone? Maybe they can email them back to you for at least a partial photo recovery.

frdmfghtr · Oct 18, 2007 , 11:58 AM

Wow, sorry to hear about all that lost data. I take it that you didn't have any backups.

I see two big "lessons learned" here; you probably figured (1) out the hrd way, but sometimes (2) needs to be mentioned since few people think about it:

(1) BACKUPS are worth the their weight in gold when you need them; get yourself an external hard drive and start some sort of backup plan as soon as the machines are back in running form.

(2) During your recovery attempts, you zeroed out the drive, which appeared to be successful. At that point, your recovery efforts were doomed. Depending on the value of the data on the drive (which I imagine was considerable esp. since it included your book draft) you might have been able to get the data recovered by a data recovery service; they have special ways of recovering data, going as far as to transplant the hard drive platters into a new drive and recovering the data.

Sorry to hear about the fiasco...it serves as a reminder to all of us to get our backups up-to-date. I'll be doing that as soon as I get home tonight.

kikkoman · Oct 18, 2007 , 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by pavement07

just found out from the apple tech that my HD had a mechical failure and is out of commission. The tech ordered a new drive from apple (fortunately, I have apple care and the new drive is free), but I'm losing all of my data. I'm bummed that my drive died in one year. Seems like a pretty short lifespan for a new MacBook. Thanks for keeping me posted. Interested in heaering about what you learn from the tech guy and your dentist's issues/resolutions. Mike

Sorry to hear you lost all your data. My MacBook drive died within a year also. Fortunately, I do not keep anything on my MacBook. Apple overnighted me a new drive and I installed it myself. It's also interesting to note component failures most likely occur near the begining or end of product's lifetime.

frdmfghtr · Oct 20, 2007 , 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by kikkoman

Sorry to hear you lost all your data. My MacBook drive died within a year also. Fortunately, I do not keep anything on my MacBook. Apple overnighted me a new drive and I installed it myself. It's also interesting to note component failures most likely occur near the begining or end of product's lifetime.

I've heard of that too--it's called the Bathtub Curve.

Here's an article about it; it's about fiver years old, but describes the Bathtub Curve.

The Bathtub Curve and Product Failure Behavior (Part 1 of 2)

The Bathtub Curve and Product Failure Behavior (Part 2 of 2)

AppleJockey · Apr 15, 2008 , 06:12 AM

this was such a great post agile
you saved me some time

Originally Posted by AgileHosting

Unfortunately, I have nothing but bad news so far.

I bought Disk Warrior and FileRecovery, and was able to recover NO FILES via either. I am losing 30 GB of data, including the draft of my book, and Gigs of photos...... breaks my heart. But nothing sees the drive in order to be able to recover anything from it.

Here's what I tried. Be sure to try each just in case.

They are in no particular order.

Force shut down by holding down the power button for 10 seconds.

Run a "diagnostic startup" (my term) by holding down the power button for 10 seconds at startup. I found that I had a long steady light, followed by rapid flash, and a DOS-like sounding beep. Whatever that means. (Will run that past my local Apple Tech today)

Reset the PMU. Instructions for many models of Macs here: Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit (PMU)

Zap the PRAM (Apple - Opt - P - R at startup)

Try to boot into single-user mode. (At startup, hit the power button to start up, and immediately follow by holding down Apple - S). After some period of time (not sure how long it might take - it never came up for me) a command-line interface should come up. If you can get it to boot into this mode, type:

Code:

/sbin/fsck -fy

Keep typing that until you get an "OK" printout. It might take several runs. Then type

Code:

reboot

The computer will reboot, and with any luck your life is golden.

Boot up using your OS CD. There are two ways to do this:
(a) Insert the CD-ROM and boot up holding down the C key. Theoretically the computer should boot up using the CD right away. (This didn't work for me)

(b) Insert the CD-ROM and power up the laptop. Let it sit there with a gray screen. After several minutes it should figure out there is a CD in the drive, and boot up from that. Patience is a virtue.

Once you are booted on the OS CD, start up Disk Utility. In Disk Utility, select your hard drve.
(a) First Aid > click Verify Disk. Note any errors you receive. I received "Invalid B-Tree node size; Volume check failed. Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit. Volume needs repair."

(b) First Aid > click Repair Disk. Note any errors you receive. I received "Invalid B-Tree node size; Volume check failed. Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit. 1 volume could not be checked because of an error."

Migration Assistant -- Since I still wanted to recover my data, my certified Apple Tech suggested booting the laptop up in target mode, and then using the Migration Assistant to copy my files over. In my case, Migration Assistant reports, "Waiting for disks to appear." Since my disk is unmountable, it never appears. Bummer. More info on Target Mode forthcoming...

Disk Warrior -- I popped for Disk Warrior (highly recommended by users on this forum with symptoms similar to mine) and fired up the laptop in Target Mode. Target Mode is where you slave the laptop to another Mac. I have a Mini here, so I drove 60 miles to find an A-A Firewire cable and embarked upon my project.

Boot up Laptop in Target Mode. To do this:
(a) Host system can already be running.

(b) Plug in firewire cable to both computers.

(c) Start up slave/broken computer with power button, and hit the T key. You may need to hold it for several long minutes. The firewire logo should eventually appear on the slave machine. It is really big and looks a lot like a screensaver.

(d) After some time (may take 5+ minutes) any mountable volumes on the slave system should auto-mount onto the host machine's finder. (In my case, since the hard drive in the laptop was unmountable, it never mounted in the host computer's finder)

While the laptop was in Target Mode, I tried a neat little app called FileRecovery. Unfortunately, and embarrassingly, I misread the available disks' addresses, and confused /dev/disk1s2 (dead disk) with /dev/disk0s2 (internal drive in the Mini on which app was running). I then proceeded to recover all the files on my Mini. Duh!! Alas, FileRecovery was NOT able to see my dead drive, thus it was another $80 wasted.

Dawn arrived and I gave up. I've been working on this 36 straight hours now. I decided to simply reformat the drive and do a fresh OS install.

The problem is, when I start up the installer, after agreeing to the license, I am prompted to select a destination volume to install the OS on. No disks appear! Crap.

So I went back and attempted to both repartition the drive (with 1 Partition). It exited with an error -- unable to complete.

I attempted to erase the drive the standard way (where no data is actually erased) -- it exited with an error, unable to complete.

Then I swallowed my soul

and hit "zero out" the drive, which would overwrite all data with zeros. That did complete successfully, or at least, I received no errors!

Now I went back and tried to set up the laptop with 1 Partition again. That ran with no errors!

Thinking I was on to something awesome, I now went to First Aid > Verify Disk........ ha ha ha fool! Invalid B-tree node size error came back. Disk is unrepairable.

So, I going to be taking this worthless, useless, infuriating POS to my local Apple Tech 90 miles away, to have him poke and bang on it. At this point I don't even care very much that I have lost 30 GB of data. I just want a working laptop again.

So there are my

findings.

If my wonder-Tech is able to recover anything, I will let you know. He lets me watch him as he works on my computers

(how cool is that?) and teaches me how to do things as he goes. So if I pick up any tricks I will report them back here.

Good luck!!

Bailey