[Josh Reid]

Hey,

So I've been using a 512MB stick of RAM in my 12" Powerbook for a year. There were some issues with it during 10.3.3, but when I updated to 10.3.4, they went away. However, they came back with 10.3.6. Constant crashes, major kernel panics with black text, etc. However, this only happened when running on battery power. That's a small but possibly significant detail.

I figured I'd try repairing permissions and reset the PRAM. Afterwards, I set the energy saver settings to have the processor run at highest performance during battery use. The Powerbook froze during Mail, so I figured I'd run the permissions repair again. I got the spinning beachball during the repair, so I clicked "Stop Permissions Repair". The status said "Stopped by user" in red text, but when I tried to quit it said that it shouldn't be quit as it was still in use or something along those lines..I gave it a few minutes, but eventually had to force quit.

Now even though I removed the RAM, the computer displays the blinking question mark in a folder icon upon startup. Using the hardware repair disk, the extended test found no problems. The disk utility on the CD could not mount the hard drive. It showed the main full hard drive itself, but not my 'volume' (or whatever the proper word is) that I use as my hard drive. Also, when it tried to "repair" the disc itself, it said "Keys out of order". It said it had fixed that, but apparently it had not.

I'm sure (at least hopeful) that a bad permissions repair wouldn't fully corrupt a hard drive forcing a wipe & reinstall. Would DiskWarrior or some other utility be able to fix the problems without having to erase the hard drive? I do fairly regular back-ups, but I have a lot of things from the past few weeks that haven't been backed up yet.

Phew, lots of info---Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Joshua

PS-This is a 1GHZ 12" Powerbook, 256MB currently, with 10.3.6

[amazing]

"Keys out of order" means that the b-tree records have been damaged. I don't think that Disk First Aid can fix this. Disk Warrior might be able to fix, that's the first thing I'd try.

Do you have access to a second Mac with a firewire port, because it would be worthwhile seeing if your PB will start up in firewire target disk mode. This would allow you to backup everything to the second Mac (or to a CD-R, etc.)

Also, what happens when you stick you original system software disk in, and hold down the C key to start up off the optical drive? Do you see the HD and your hard drive name at that point? Because you should be able to do an archive and install, which would preserve the data while reinstalling the original system software.

[Josh Reid]

Thanks for the reply. In Disk First Aid on the original installation disc, it did not show my hard drive's name, etc..However, I purchased Disk Warrior. I started up the computer using DW and it 'rebuilt' the hard drive, optimized it, and showed that all data was able to be preserved. According to DW, everything was 100% fixed. To be clear, after rebuilding, it now shows my original HD name and contents.

However, when re-starting the computer, I STILL get the blinking question mark folder. The DW manual says that you should re-bless your system folder after rebuilding and optimizing your hard drive, but if I remember correctly, I thought that was something we did back in OS 9. Is there a way to 'bless' your system folder in 10.3? I repaired permissions using the original software installation disc, there were a TON of them that were incorrect. The hard drive now succesfully appears in the Disk Utility, but again...I'm not able to start off of it. Also, when I start up holding the Option key, OS 10.3 does not appear as an available OS...only whatever CD I have in the computer, whether it be the original disc or Disk Warrior.

I don't have a second mac to do firewire target mode (whatever it's called), and I'm writing this on computer at work...

Any other ideas?

Thank you!

Josh

[Josh Reid]

Well after trying lots of things, I decided to do an archive & install. It actually was a fairly painless process, though it took a couple of hours to install 10.2 from the original software disc and then to update to 10.3, and then download the many software updates...

Anyhow, just wanted to put a close to this thread in case anyone ever searches it for help!

Josh