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air · Dec 19, 2006, 08:59 PM

Everytime my computer wakes up from sleep, I have to enter my password. All of a sudden, I get a beachball against a black background without a login window. I just tried to Software Update Mac OS X and it gave me a beachball right after "Checking for Updates."

How can I fix this?

jmiddel · Dec 20, 2006, 08:59 PM

air, I suppose you have set things up so as to HAVE to enter your pw after sleep, right? Also, how did you try to do SWupdate if you can't login?

I am assuming that you are in the black screeen +beachball. For the time being, try to turn the computer off and reboot holding command-S, then hopefully you will get a screen with lines of text, on the bottom it tells you how to perform the filesystemcheck, fsck. It entails typing in the command and pressing return. Do that and if you find any errors repeat the process. Then type exit, or quit, whitchever works, and return to continue booting. Post back with the results and the other info, and we'll try to be of help.

thoromyr · Dec 22, 2006, 05:43 PM

By the sound of things I'm having the exact same problem and have had no luck yet googling for the problem (other than finding this thread). More specifically, my problem is sometimes I get only a black screen with spinning beachball instead of a login dialog when waking my mac up. So far the only solution I have found is to power it off by holding the power button down 6+ seconds. No amount of waiting seems to do any good.

I know the mac is still operating because it is active on the network. Trying to SSH to it fails (nmap shows it listening on port 22, but trying to actually ssh never gets a response).

I'm not sure about previous cases, but in the current instance it is very likely that OS X is deep into virtual memory. As I need the mac for some work in the next 20 minutes I'm going to have to power cycle it and can check the logs later, but I've done that recently and didn't find anything that looked out of the ordinary.

System: intel core duo macbook pro

air · Dec 22, 2006, 09:56 PM

UPDATE:

Well, now it hangs at the Boot screen. The bar fills up all the way, and then hangs.
I just used Tech Tool Pro as a boot disc, ran some diagnostics and there are some very severe problems with my hd. So much as it was recommended that I zero the hard drive!

I am currently able to back up what I need using firewire target disc mode on a separate computer. This is just bad

any suggestions?

thoromyr · Dec 22, 2006, 11:43 PM

It sounds to me like you are on track. It really depends on exactly what happened, but if there was a crash during a system update that corrupted the file system I would recommend backuping files via firewire and reinstalling.

air · Dec 23, 2006, 12:23 AM

I remember that something along these lines caused a very similar result about half a year ago. My hd was really messed up by Final Cut Pro after a cable was disconnected during a capture/transfer. But I think it happened a different time (also on diff. machine) when I was using Azureus, a torrent program. Its written in java and has a feature to remove torrents, delete .torrent files, and delete the spawn file, all in one step. I think something like that happened this time again.

I guess I just shouldn't use that feature anymore!

air · Dec 23, 2006, 09:55 AM

Ok. I have backed everything up. I copied over some apps and my entire home folder, like, lets say "jrichards"

How do I go about reformatting my drive? I haven't done this in a while, so I am guessing I have to zero it and format it as Mac OS Extended...?

Once I have tiger installed, can I create a "jrichards" user, and after setting up, immediately copy the backup "jrichards" folder into the new User folder, or should I create a user just to set everything up and then make a new "jrichards" user and then transfer?