[mmintler]

A friend asked me to look at his G4 cube because when starting up he is getting the ? -obviously meaning there is a problem with the system folder.

He is still on 10.1 and I no longer have my 10.1 CDs so I connected my laptop and started his machine up in firewire target mode. I then ran disk utility and it found and fixed a few problems. ( I didnt' write them down...)

I disconnected my mac, restarted his machine and everything was working fine for about a day. He called me last night and said the same problem has re-occurred.

Now, I have owned macs for about 12 years. And I've probably had this happen once in os9 but have never had this in Os X. I told him that this was a rare occurance and that it shouldn't happen again-of course it did. So, I'm confused as to what would cause this to happen. My guesses are the following...

1. power surge?? (not likely)
2. a larger system folder problem that an upgrade might cure

3. A misbehaving application..the initial problem seemed to coinside to the installation of a program called Citrix- a VPN type application. But I can't be sure of this. I ran the app several time and re-started his machine several time and everthing was ok while I was there

Any help or suggestion would be greatly appreciated

Thanks
Mark

[PookJP]

I don't have a particularly good suggestion about the system folder in question, but if either of you has OS X (.1, .2, or .3) install disks, why don't you do an archive install? That usually fixes my system problems without affecting my data.

[dtriska]

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58042

It's possible it's a greater problem with the hard drive. Run Disk Utility again, and report any errors here. You may need to pick up a better disk app, such as DiskWarrior.

[Big Mac]

First of all, start up from a different disk to determine the extent to which the internal drive is damaged. It really shouldn't be anything significant, but there is the possibility that the drive may need significant repairs. Disk First Aid isn't very advanced and probably won't do the trick, so do him a favor and run Alsoft's Disk Warrior. I can personally attest to the fact that Disk Warrior is a terrific application. It saved me from having to reinstall the OS when I had a major crash while in OS 9 that made me think a reinstall or possibly even a reformat would be necessary. If you don't fix the existing problems with the drive a reinstall of the OS alone may not be sufficient.