Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > MacBook Pro won't boot (Leopard) - plz help

MacBook Pro won't boot (Leopard) - plz help
Thread Tools
Dark Goob
Forum Regular
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Portland, OR
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 11:50 AM
 
For some reason, my Leopard partition won't load up. My computer boots fine from the Tiger partition.

I put in a new Hitachi 200GB drive from Newegg. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to move my files from my old drive, which I had placed into a USB enclosure. Things worked fine.

Then I did live partitioning of my new drive to make a 30GB partition in which to install Tiger (to run Pro Tools, which I have not installed yet). However during the live partitioning, Disk Utility reported that the partitioning had failed. SO I ran the "Repair Disk" and it found minor problems and repaired them. Then I rebooted from the OS X install CD and tried "Repair Disk" again, and then did the live partitioning again, and it failed again. So I ran the "Repair Disk" again and it repaired it. Then, one more time, I tried the live partitioning to make my new 30GB partition, and this time it got a lot farther along, but it quit and said "Disk Utility lost contact with DiskManager" or something like that.

So then I looked and there was a new partition, it was just not formatted. So I formatted it, and then ran Repair Disk on both partitions. Then I installed Tiger on the new partition. It boots up fine.

However I started to experience weird issues with my Leopard partition. Firstly I never hear a startup chime. Also, if I try to boot up with the Leopard partition selected, if I try to do a Safe Boot (holding shift), then I get the flashing (/) symbol alternating with the Apple Logo. If I try a normal boot, I just get the solid Apple logo with no "spinning circle" beneath it.

So the first time this happened I tried running Disk Warrior 4.0. I did "rebuild directory" and then it said there were errors (even though Disk Utility found no errors). So I said "replace directory"... but at the very end of replacing the directory, Disk Warrior crashed! So then I rebooted from the Leopard DVD and ran Disk Utility again, and it found a couple of problems and then fixed them.

Then the machine booted fine. But now I'm back to the same problem as before, where it gets to the screen with the Apple logo (no startup chime) and will not boot Leopard.

However my Tiger partition (10.4.9, the DVD that came with my MacBook Pro) boots fine, although I am experiencing weird crashes with Safari while doing searches on the Apple support site! That's why I'm posting here in the Forums, because I could not search the other areas.

Hopefully someone can tell me what the **** is going on. I do have everything backed up so I'm not too freaked out, but I am afraid to do Archive and Install on the Leopard partition because I do not want to have to reinstall all my serialized and Application Support heavy software like Adobe CS3 and DP5 and Reason. So hopefully someone can tell me what the **** is going on. Thanks.
     
analogika
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: 888500128
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 12:01 PM
 
Sounds like a hardware problem.

Run the Apple Hardware Test from the Install Disk 1 (reboot with the disk in the drive and hold the "D" key) and report back.

If that doesn't show anything, zero out the drive (not just a regular format) and start over.
     
bishopazrael
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Nov 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 12:21 PM
 
Yeah... analog has the right idea. If you test the drive and it's fine, take your tiger disk... zero the drive, then when you install tiger, partition it into 3 partitions or however many you need... and proceed as normal.
     
Dark Goob  (op)
Forum Regular
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Portland, OR
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 12:23 PM
 
Gosh analogika, you people are always so "nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" around here.

I will run the hardware test, but anyway, I think I figured out what the problem was.

See, when I installed my new drive, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to dupe my previous volume to the new one. Therefore both of these boot volumes have the same exact name, "Besty 3." After I had some issues with the partitioning, I set the older "Besty 3" (now a USB drive) to be my boot volume. Then later I restarted,disconnecting that "Besty 3". Yet my startup disk was set to that "Besty 3" still, and it saw the newer "Besty 3" (the internal drive) and starts the boot-up process, but then hangs because it's not actually the same drive. Or something.

I'll do further testing to see if that's really what it is, but it would sure explain the flashing (/) symbol and [?] (which usually indicates that there's no drive present, much like the flashing question-mark used to in older Macs).

Anyway it mysteriously started working again after I rebooted into Tiger and then set my start-up disk to the Leopard volume "Besty 3" (the internal one) using the Startup Disk control panel.

<crosses fingers>

-=DG=-
     
bishopazrael
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Nov 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 12:33 PM
 
The reason we're so "nuke the site from orbit", at least for my part is that I'm a full time work tech. Do you want a method thats going to take you on a roundabout trip of hell and frustration? Or do you want to solve the problem and move on? We're offering the method that is usually a combination of the following: expedient, easy, safe, the least amount of non technical work... ie... command line hacking etc... in other words we're offering you the safest and fastest way through a problem. However, if you're like me and you're breaking so you can fix it and learn, the you obviously need to state that. Othewise the assumption is that you just want to fix the problem and move on with life.


PS... great reference... ripley rules. Just watched both AvP's and the original Predator. Now I'm going to torrent all the Alien series.
     
dowNNshift
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2001
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 03:42 PM
 
It sounds definitely like directory corruption. Live partitioning will fail if it cannot move all the files in the disk zone that it wants to repartition. This happens commonly on machines that have applications and data installed on a previous OS, then in your case, Leopard was installed and wrote un-movable files. Live partitioning cannot and will not touch those files.

Also be aware that Disk Warrior 4 is not fully compatible with Leopard, as they've posted a bulletin on their website. If Disk Warrior crashed, then that is a very bad sign. That program almost never crashes, especially during a directory rebuild.

As said above, the fastest way to solve the problem which gives you the most stable outcome is to back up your data on the drive and start over. Disk clones are tricky when you're working with Tigers directory structure vs Leopards.
     
silver
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Bunch Of Islands in The Pacific
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 03:53 PM
 
Concerning Diskwarrior, if you look at there site Alsoft claims that the only thing not to do is repair permission through Diskwarrior. Fixing Directories is fine, just do it from the Diskwarrior disc. This has been discussed several time on macfixit.com.
 MBP 17" 2.16ghz, ATI x1600 256, 100GBHD, 2GB ram, 23"AppleLCD
     
Dark Goob  (op)
Forum Regular
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Portland, OR
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 04:22 PM
 
OK, how in the world is erasing my entire hard drive and then installing a fresh OS X (takes at least one hour) and then reinstalling all of my applications (would take at least four hours) and then, piece by piece, putting my iPhoto library, iTunes library, Mail files, and every other application preference back where it's supposed to be (would take several hours), then reinstalling all my audio plug-ins... the "nuke the site from orbit" is the LAST thing I want to do because it would take a million years for life to re-evolve. I want some way to AVOID having to do that.

And why would Leopard install "un-movable files"? Sounds like a bug to me. Why the hell would Apple do that?

Also why doesn't Apple create an operating system that repairs permissions automatically? Since obviously it's such an important fricking thing to do. And how do they get broken in the first place?

Personally I would just as soon that they did away with permissions completely... I'm the only person who uses my computer and I have a good firewall. All previous Mac systems (1.0 through 9.x) did not have permissions and they were virtually unhackable. They also had a much easier to understand System folder because there was just one place for preferences, extensions, control panels, and startup items (not two or more). Your documents were not buried ten levels deep into the hard drive. Everything was given PLAIN ENGLISH names. Why do they have to name stuff crap like "pmTool", "launchd", "pvsnatd", etc. where there's no way to find out what the hell these things are? Whatever happened to "user friendliness"?

Apple has REALLY gone downhill.
     
analogika
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: 888500128
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 06:34 PM
 
Originally Posted by bishopazrael View Post
The reason we're so "nuke the site from orbit", at least for my part is that I'm a full time work tech. Do you want a method thats going to take you on a roundabout trip of hell and frustration? Or do you want to solve the problem and move on?
Exactly.

I've been in tech support long enough to know when it's time to STOP FUTZING WITH IT and do what works end of story.

You've already wasted enough time on something that you're unlikely to make better by continuing to fiddle with it. I certainly wouldn't trust your current set-up for production work.

YMMV.
     
analogika
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: 888500128
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 06:53 PM
 
Originally Posted by Dark Goob View Post
And why would Leopard install "un-movable files"? Sounds like a bug to me. Why the hell would Apple do that?

Also why doesn't Apple create an operating system that repairs permissions automatically? Since obviously it's such an important fricking thing to do. And how do they get broken in the first place?

Personally I would just as soon that they did away with permissions completely... I'm the only person who uses my computer and I have a good firewall. All previous Mac systems (1.0 through 9.x) did not have permissions and they were virtually unhackable.
I'm sorry, but you have absolutely NO CLUE of which you speak.

OS 9 was extremely vulnerable - hardly anything ever happened simply because there wasn't anything much of interest you could actually DO with a machine you gained remote access to.

And as for permissions being unnecessary because "you're the only user"... The reason permissions exist is precisely to KEEP IT THAT WAY.

However, your whole diatribe is based on ignorance and has been throughly rebutted and regurgitated hundreds of times on this and every other Mac forum on the web over the past eight years ad nauseam.
     
bishopazrael
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Nov 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2008, 07:19 PM
 
Dark,
I know it seems like an endless list of to do's.. but this illustrates the need for a good solid reliable back up. Not of the OS, but just of your folders and such. Moving your photos back should be as easy as opening iphoto and importing your backed up iphoto library. Same thing for itunes. And Documents... just drag and drop.

I know it seems very frustrating, and believe me, this is why guys like analog and I get paid the big bucks. Would you like to know a secret about how tech's work their charges? At least me... speaking for myself, had you been a customer of mine and given me this problem to fix... I would have taken it in, it would have taken me maybe 2 whole days of solid work, but in the end I'd wind up charging you only 3 or 4 hours worth of work. But in reality it would have taken more like 8 or 9 hours of hands on work. So keep that in mind when you're doubting a solution like we posted. We know it sounds like a lot of work, but in the end, it's faster and the more reliable method of getting to the end of the race. I hope this turns out OK for you because I know I hate it when I wind up reformatting my Mac.

I've done a lot of that as of late, trying to find a good setup for myself. I think I've found it, but only time will tell if it will truely work for me or not. I've been going back and forth, putting on tiger, putting on leopard, putting on XP, putting on Vista, putting on leopard and then wiping out the bootcamp and using parallels for ALL windows work.

Anyways, good luck and I'm always here to help you out if you need it.
     
dowNNshift
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2001
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 7, 2008, 12:04 AM
 
Its not Apple's fault -- even Windows has un-movable files. Run a Defrag on a PC, notice the block of files that can't be moved? Those are the files in the Windows folder.

Having the ability to create new live partitions without having to destroy the original partition is a great new feature, but it has limitations. Envision your drive like an optical disc -- data is written from the center outwards. Usually something significant like an OS is the first thing you install and is written at the beginning of the drive. But when you've heavily used your machine (installed programs, user files, etc) the drive fills outward. When you installed Leopard those files were written much later in the drive, and cannot be moved as they are critical to operation.

Basically you have two options, 1. back up and re-install or 2. Using Disk Utility, image your drive, then create your multiple partitions, erase and then restore.
     
Dark Goob  (op)
Forum Regular
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Portland, OR
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 7, 2008, 06:19 PM
 
I'm not a sadomasochist and I do use my computer for production work. So much in fact that I don't have time to spend two days reformatting and reinstalling everything. In fact I have done the "upgrade" option to my OS without any problems since System 10.0. Now when I got my new MacBook Pro it came with 10.4.9 and I imported my user files from my previous machine, though it got stuck on the fonts. I was able to clean it up and it works, other than Second Life crashing because either Second Life is crap, or Apple's graphics drivers for the NVIDIA 8600M GT are buggy, or both. I'll go with both, since Apple has released at least one driver update to fix bugs but we still get quite a few with Second Life.

Anyway I know that permissions are a necessary evil.

But I still don't know why they can't use PLAIN ENGLISH NAMES for system items anymore. I know that Unix is "just that way," but it doesn't make it right. They really should at least have Activity Monitor tell you when you click on a process the description of that process, whether its checksum shows it's been altered from the official Apple version, and whether or not it's an Apple system process or a third party process, etc. Because the way it is now, the normal user has no idea what the hell all these things are. And not all of us are unix beards, even if we have been using Macs since 1984 like myself.

And quite frankly as I said, I already figured out what the problem was: it was because I had an external boot drive (my backup, yes I keep a backup) that is a Carbon Copy Cloner exact clone of my internal drive (same name, same everything). And apparently there's a bug in Leopard where if you set an exact USB drive clone of your internal drive as the startup disk, and then shut down, remove that drive, then try and start up -- it won't work, because it starts from the internal drive volume that has the same name but then it gets confused because it's looking for something on USB which is actually no longer there...

Now this wouldn't even be necessary if there weren't so many programs where if you change the name of your hard drive then it messes up the preferences because the programs use the name of the hard drive in the directory path. Which IMHO should never be done, but people can't write software well.

-=DG=-
     
analogika
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: 888500128
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 7, 2008, 07:09 PM
 
Originally Posted by Dark Goob View Post
But I still don't know why they can't use PLAIN ENGLISH NAMES for system items anymore. I know that Unix is "just that way," but it doesn't make it right.
Please stop acting like OS9 was any less cryptic and arcane.
"Being used to" != "better"

Originally Posted by Dark Goob View Post
They really should at least have Activity Monitor tell you when you click on a process the description of that process, whether its checksum shows it's been altered from the official Apple version, and whether or not it's an Apple system process or a third party process, etc. Because the way it is now, the normal user has no idea what the hell all these things are. And not all of us are unix beards, even if we have been using Macs since 1984 like myself.
Well, Leopard is actually finally introducing application signing, so the "official version" thing is in the process of being solved.

And as for 3rd-party or Apple-supplied: The System Profiler does an excellent job of listing extensions and applications, supplying exactly the information you seek. (Now that you mention it, it would be nice if the Activity Viewer could pull that info from System Profiler and integrate it with top...must request feature at Apple's feedback form.)

[QUOTE=Dark Goob;3570879And quite frankly as I said, I already figured out what the problem was: it was because I had an external boot drive (my backup, yes I keep a backup) that is a Carbon Copy Cloner exact clone of my internal drive (same name, same everything). And apparently there's a bug in Leopard where if you set an exact USB drive clone of your internal drive as the startup disk, and then shut down, remove that drive, then try and start up -- it won't work, because it starts from the internal drive volume that has the same name but then it gets confused because it's looking for something on USB which is actually no longer there...

Now this wouldn't even be necessary if there weren't so many programs where if you change the name of your hard drive then it messes up the preferences because the programs use the name of the hard drive in the directory path. Which IMHO should never be done, but people can't write software well. [/QUOTE]
Well, I hope that's what it was. Good luck.
     
Dark Goob  (op)
Forum Regular
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Portland, OR
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 8, 2008, 02:25 AM
 
Originally Posted by analogika View Post
Please stop acting like OS9 was any less cryptic and arcane.
"Being used to" != "better"
Actually, it *was* less cryptic and arcane. Things being written in plain English is always better than things being written in beard-speak. Forgive me for "being used to" the English language. It must have something to do with my education. They didn't teach me Unixese in school.

Look, I understand that in 1964 or whenever Unix was first developed, there was very limited system memory and therefore it was necessary to name things "tsch" and crap like that. But now that my laptop has 4GB of RAM and a 200GB hard drive, I just don't see the necessity for being economical with filenames. It would seem to me that being less cryptic and more user friendly would be the "Apple" thing to do.

Also, it's not like I'm not used to OS X. I've been using OS X since the beta version of 10.0. Every day since then, in fact -- about, what, six years? That's about a solid six years. Yet I still am somewhat mystified when I look at the Activity Monitor and see "fseventsd" running as root and I have NO IDEA what it is. I googled it and in the top 10 items, I don't see anything that explains what it is. It's not in Wikipedia. It's not in my Mac user manual. SO forgive me if I call this "not user friendly" -- it's NOT. It has nothing to do with being used to an operating system that I used before that.

It just so happens however, that the operating system I used before that had all plain English filenames for system items, and everything MADE SENSE. It was a fricking Macintosh! And I'd like to see OS X eventually become worthy of the name "Mac" as well.

Well, Leopard is actually finally introducing application signing, so the "official version" thing is in the process of being solved.
Excellent. That's good to hear!

And as for 3rd-party or Apple-supplied: The System Profiler does an excellent job of listing extensions and applications, supplying exactly the information you seek. (Now that you mention it, it would be nice if the Activity Viewer could pull that info from System Profiler and integrate it with top...must request feature at Apple's feedback form.)


Well, I hope that's what it was. Good luck.
Yeah hopefully it is all it was. Honestly I was surprised my computer even worked after Disk Warrior crashed. Well here's to OS X's stability!
     
analogika
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: 888500128
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 9, 2008, 08:53 AM
 
Originally Posted by Dark Goob View Post
Actually, it *was* less cryptic and arcane. Things being written in plain English is always better than things being written in beard-speak. Forgive me for "being used to" the English language. It must have something to do with my education. They didn't teach me Unixese in school.

Look, I understand that in 1964 or whenever Unix was first developed, there was very limited system memory and therefore it was necessary to name things "tsch" and crap like that.
When have you encountered the term "tsch" recently?

And I'm not sure Joe Sixpack really finds "SLPPlugin", "SOMobjects™ for Mac OS", "NSL UI Library" or "NBP Plugin" particularly more helpful than anything he actually needs to interact with in OS X.

The big difference, of course, was that to do any serious work in OS 9, you HAD TO deal with dozens of Extensions and know what they actually did, just to get (and keep) a stable, running system.

Forgive me for thinking that the default folder and naming structure is not inherently more arcane than having, say a folder at an arbitrary location whose function is to stick FILES that you throw into it INTO A SYSTEM-WIDE MENU!? Or jumbling vital printer files - sometimes three or four plus a folder or two - into the same folder as networking extensions, font handling and appearance managers?

Originally Posted by Dark Goob View Post
But now that my laptop has 4GB of RAM and a 200GB hard drive, I just don't see the necessity for being economical with filenames. It would seem to me that being less cryptic and more user friendly would be the "Apple" thing to do.
I agree completely, and I'm glad that Apple in general has plain-English names for all visible system components and support files, sorted into plainly-labeled and obvious folder structures.

You're confusing the Terminal with the visible file structure. Nobody needs to use the Terminal for day-to-day use (nobody who'd not be using this OS specifically BECAUSE of the availability of a Unix shell, that is).

Originally Posted by Dark Goob View Post
Also, it's not like I'm not used to OS X. I've been using OS X since the beta version of 10.0. Every day since then, in fact -- about, what, six years? That's about a solid six years. Yet I still am somewhat mystified when I look at the Activity Monitor and see "fseventsd" running as root and I have NO IDEA what it is. I googled it and in the top 10 items, I don't see anything that explains what it is. It's not in Wikipedia. It's not in my Mac user manual. SO forgive me if I call this "not user friendly" -- it's NOT. It has nothing to do with being used to an operating system that I used before that.
Ninth link from the top when googling "fseventsd":
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review: Page 7

Also, this argument is really rather disingenuous: There was simply no comparable tool to Activity Viewer under OS 9, so what you're really saying is that the INABILITY TO SEE what the system was running under OS 9 was just so much less confusing...
     
   
Thread Tools
 
Forum Links
Forum Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Top
Privacy Policy
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 02:56 PM.
All contents of these forums © 1995-2017 MacNN. All rights reserved.
Branding + Design: www.gesamtbild.com
vBulletin v.3.8.8 © 2000-2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.,