[Tenacious Dyl]

Hi Everyone,
I've always had odd booting problems... they come and go. Thankfully I have a 200 GB Seagate Barracuda in a firewire enclosure as backup.

This morning I booted and it said something similar to "The disk does not contain volumes that OS X can understand" I had two options "Ignore" and "Restart" I believe.

I ran Disk Utility twice, and each time it 'errored out', with the error code (-9972).

A third time, Disk Utility didn't immediately error out... it read:

"Verifying volume �Laptop HD�
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid extent entry
The volume Laptop HD needs to be repaired.

Volume check failed.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)"

I am still under warrenty (I have had it only 6 months). But my phone support if no longer free.

I need to have this laptop fixed ASAP. And I need to save as much money as POSSIBLE.

Is there an email at Apple to write to... is there a toll-free calling number for warrenty claims... what do I do?! Please help me.

[Tenacious Dyl]

Update: Called Apple Support....

My phone support is over, but my hardware still has 6 months left on it.

After waiting almost an hour, I was finally connected to someone. Someone that doesn't understand most of what I said.

I explained that the computer has been having boot problems. I explained that it completely failed Disk Utility, and that I ran tests proving hardware failure from an external drive I booted on. I gave them all of the error codes and my serial number. I also explained I have (as well as my parents years ago) put over $15,000 in direct apple products. (by naming the computers I own when he asked)

They then asked me for my email so they could send me newsletters.
They already have my email, but I said alright...

They then instead of trying to help me, tried to sell me apple care.
I declined...

Then he asked for my credit card number.
I was like why...
He said he needed to charge me $49 for his service, and that if my problem was actually hardware, that I should be refunded at a later date.
I declined...

I, very politely, told him that I had more than enough evidence that this is a hardwear problem, and do not want to be charged $49 for something still under warrenty. He told me that there was no way to get my *under warranty* computer fixed by Apple without paying the fee, unless I drove to a store.

I questioned him, and asked "is there not a number to call for sending your computer in for service without being charged". His response of course was no.

So I have some choices.... I can drive 4 hours to the nearest apple store, which means I miss work. Then I can give them my powerbook, tell them whats wrong. They won't believe me, and probably run tests on it for a day or two, and put it "in line". Then I'll drive 4 hours home. I have now missed at least 9 hours of work or class.

Then at a later date the store will probably call me and I will have to waste another 9 hours.

This is absolutely ludicris.

I have a broken powerbook. It is obviously broken. I have the error codes from apples very software that prove there is hard-drive failure. But I must pay $50 dollars, or lose 18 hours of my week for this.

Why is there no "warrenty number". You call it, they send you airborne express box, you put the pbook in the box, they send it back shortly.

I suppose I'm just glad I had my data backed up... I could have lost a lot of personal work, writings, and family photos.

Does anyone have any advice for me? It looks like I have poor options and they are the only ones out there....

[Bozley]

The $50 fee sounds a lot better to me then all that time wasted. In my opinion your time is far more important then the $50 fee�. that you will be refunded anyway because you are positive it is a faulty hard drive.

It�s a real shame that people have obviously abused the Apple Care program and now Apple has to set up these kind of policies to protect it self (Not saying your abusing it). Then again it seems it is all in who you talk to at Apple Care some people work with you and then others seem to working against you. Just don�t yell and scream be firm and if you have to keep going hirer on the proverbial management ladder until you get someone that has the power to give you what you want.

Good Luck

PS-It could be worse a lot people don�t have an external Hard drive to back up there stuff.

[SplijinX]

Check out this forum, might provide you with some answers:

http://www.macworld.com/forums/ubbth...b=5&o=&fpart=1

If you try the things mentioned and conclude that it is a hardware issue, and not a software one, just call Apple up again, tell them your harddrive's been acting up and won't boot, that you've tried such and such approaches to correct it and that it has narrowed down the causes of your -9972 error to being a physical problem that they need to warranty and replace.

Just do your research on the issue, present your case and be nice. Their phone support is used to diagnose problems, if you can compenently do it yourself and be able to present it to them there is no reason that they should not open up a work order for you. I've had my SuperDrive replaced while it was out of phone support, and did not have to pay any additional fees.

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by Tenacious Dyl:

A third time, Disk Utility didn't immediately error out... it read:

"Verifying volume �Laptop HD�
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid extent entry
The volume Laptop HD needs to be repaired.

Volume check failed.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)"

Did you try the repair option of Disk Utility? This report sounds as if its only a corrupt filesystem.

[urrl78]

You did the right thing. However you should make that drive to the Apple store if software advice from others here fails. I might point out there are other stores approved by Apple. We have a "Mac Center" store right across the street from where I work. I also found out just recently that there is an Apple store in a Mall close to my neighborhood so I don't have to drive all the way to Miami. Call again that phone support number just to find out if there is an approved place nearer to you. Other than that I feel phone support is a waste of time in my opinion. After shelling out $50 guess what? They told me to take it to an Apple store anyway because they could not find a software solution. I have yet to see if they ever refunded my money. Frankly it doesn't matter much to me; I ended up getting a FREE 1.5 Ghz 17" laptop.

...At the Apple store for me it was a whole different ball game. Because they could actually see the problem on my laptop they could make a decision on the spot what to do. I didn't have to wait even 15 minutes. They were friendly and courteous and far less closed minded than phone support. Upon learning my 1 Ghz 17" laptop had to be sent in for repair I asked the genius to make a RECORD of my laptop's exterior condition. He gladly did so. Another point; if you send your laptop yourself thru phone support (they will send you a mail delivery box) and your laptop returns with additional damage IT MAY BE YOU who are blamed. I have read posts of this happening, all because they could not prove the condition of the laptop before it was sent out. DON'T send it on your own thru phone support. Let the store do it. They will even check it when it returns before you get there to receive it. I am sure others will post it was no problem when they sent it in themselves. But there are other stories of folks who did it themselves and paid the price for not taking it to an Apple Store in the first place.

All in all I am pleased with Apple's service. My 1 Ghz could not be fixed after three tries of repair and they gave me a flawless 1.5 Ghz 17" laptop. Needless to say I need surgery to remove the perpetual smile on my face.


That's my 2 cents. Complain about driving distance if you want, but as far as I am concerned it's the only way after you have tried to reset PRAM, repair permissions and format the hard drive (among other things).

Hope things turn out for you as well as they did for me!

[Tenacious Dyl]

Thanks everyone!! I am going to continue to try software solutions... and if I cannot get this after one more day I will take a day off work to go to the store. Perhaps it will be a hard fix and I will get a new one Hehe. I wouldn't mind just an upgrade from 12" rev b to 12" rev c. Probably won't happen... but I like to dream.

Ill keep posting

[Tenacious Dyl]

Fast update: I tried repairing the disk using utility earlier... and just hadn't bothered to post the extremely similar response.

"Repairing disk for �Laptop HD�
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid extent entry
Volume check failed.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)

Repair attempted on 1 volume
0 HFS volumes repaired
1 volume could not be repaired"

So software (at least apple's) apparently can't do the trick...

[tooki]

It's not a hardware problem. Disk hardware failures tend to manifest themselves in more, um, assertive ways.

It's just corrupted beyond what Disk First Aid can repair. (DFA is VERY conservative and will only make repairs that it is 100% confident it can complete flawlessly.)

You need a third-party utility. Read: DiskWarrior.

Buy and run it and you should be fine. No Mac owner should not own DiskWarrior.

tooki

[urrl78]

Except those Powerbooks introduced starting April of 2004. To my understanding Diskwarrior CD will not work with those (mine) yet, they are working on a fix unless I am misunderstanding their website.

"Note: The current DiskWarrior CD is not able to start up eMac, iBook, or PowerBook models introduced in April 2004, or the dual G5 Power Mac models released in June 2004. An updated DiskWarrior CD will be available once an updated startup CD System folder is released to developers. We will post a notice on this page when the CD with the new System folder is available."

http://alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/support.html#Panther

I have Diskwarrior 3.0 and it will not boot my 1.5 Ghz. It worked on my 1.0 Ghz 17" though.

Or are they saying Diskwarrior 3.0.2 will work. Seems unclear.

Hmmm... I see a free download to upgrade my CD to 3.0.2. Try that when I get home. Anyone know if it works on the latest Powerbooks?

[Tenacious Dyl]

Perhaps I can purchase disk warrior later.. I am not sure.

Hopefuly the apple store will be apple to fix this one way or the other. I'll go in Saturday and hopefully not miss very much work. I no longer really care what happens here... I just need to get my powerbook working. If the problem is really strange and they replace it with another rev b, or even a rev c... all the better.

I hate this though... I'm an apple freak, i don't even waver near the windows side But every mac I have had, has had trouble within 1 year of ownership. Not so good :-\

[rag on a muffin]

has anyone noticed that apple product control, in my opinion has become horrible, ever since the imac revolution?

my dad and i have collectively owned 4 desktops, and 2 laptops before the imac revolution, and my mom and i collectively own 2 desktops, and 3 laptops after the imac revolution.

all our computers before the imac revolution were incredibly durable, never, ever had a problem, not even a software problem, except one, (caused by norton disk doctor's disk defrag)

everything after the imac revolution, worse than the worst windows machine related to problems. the only computer redeeming apple has been my awesome powerbook.

my dad refuses to upgrade to anything that looks good, because he is afraid of it breaking like ours (my mom and i) do. he now uses a umax S900 if im not mistaken

all my mac friends i know, have had the same issues with quality control, anyone like to comment?

[cms]

Originally posted by urrl78:
Anyone know if it works on the latest Powerbooks?

Yes, it does. Works on my new G5 dual, too. No mess, no fuss. Just does the job every time.

I agree with Tooki. It's the fix disk every Maccie should own.

[Tenacious Dyl]

Updates Again,
Today, upon trying to boot (again using a perfectly good and tested external f/w drive to boot). I encountered TWO MORE problems. My powerbook is falling apart.

The first boot-up resulted in a very slow load... it got to about halfway through loading (around the network area of the loading bar). And verbose popped up everywhere stating:

"Unresolved Kernal Trap) CPU"

It repeated itself all the way down the screen.

The second time I booted up... it froze, again, but this time a little further into booting. And with this freeze, there was no message.

Third booting was finally 'accepted' and now I am online.... running again, off of my external drive.

[bighead]

Partition your HD and then zero it out. Sometimes I've found that modifying/erasing the partition map works better than just zeroing alone. But yeah, invalid extents are purely software. Sounds to me like Limewire usage is catching up with you and finally hosing your computer...

And, invalid extents can cause freezing when booting from other disks. Have you ever booted from a Diskwarrior CD on a massively hosed machine? It's a lesson in patience, that's for sure.

[urrl78]

Interesting. Wondering if there is anything you can do from there like an internal HD reformat or run disk utility or shove in the install CD and do something that way.

I tried updating the old Diskwarrior 3.0 CD with the download. The resulting burned CD will not boot; it must be I still have to have an updated version of OSX on the burned CD; I will have to simply order Diskwarrior 3.0.2 which I suppose has the latest booting version of OS 10.3.4

I feel like if there is a chance you can fully format your or use Diskwarrior you might be able to save the HD. Of course at the Apple store they may have such a solution with Drive 10 or Tech Tools Pro or soething like that.

[urrl78]

Update: The current Diskwarrior CD does not work on Powerbooks introduced in April of 2004. I pre-ordered the upcomming version of Diskwarrior CD that will work for my Powerbook, which the saleslady says will be comming out as soon as possibly a few days.

[tooki]

The downloadable DiskWarrior updates update the DiskWarrior application on the CD. That's not the problem. To boot the newest Macs, you need a CD with a newer operating system, and that's not something that they can make an updater for (Apple won't let them).

tooki

[Tenacious Dyl]

Eehhh more problems. It seems the boot-ability (despite a perfectly good external drive) of the laptop is failing. This afternoon it took 5 tries to get it to finally boot. Each of those 5 it failed on the "checking disks" loading bar.

Apple store road trip sometime soon... too many other problems in my life right now to go tomorrow though. ack.,

[bighead]

Originally posted by Tenacious Dyl:
Eehhh more problems. It seems the boot-ability (despite a perfectly good external drive) of the laptop is failing. This afternoon it took 5 tries to get it to finally boot. Each of those 5 it failed on the "checking disks" loading bar.

Apple store road trip sometime soon... too many other problems in my life right now to go tomorrow though. ack.,

Have you zeroed the hard disk? This is the first thing that SHOULD be done unless there is some sort of audible indication of a drive failure. A bad internal drive can cause boot problems even from an external. Save yourself some time and give it a shot before you drive a long while...

[Tenacious Dyl]

Hi,
I hate to sound like a newb here, but what is "zeroing" out a drive. Do you mean just completely erasing it, and re-formatting it, and installing the system again?

Or do you mean some special technique an application uses to set all the recorded "1's and 0's" to "0's".

Please tell me there is a way to do this without buying a %^&# cd utility.

[tooki]

Dude, just spend the freaking $80 and buy DiskWarrior. Is your time so worthless that you can kill 2 weeks trying futilely to fix the problem with underpowered utilities before it becomes worthwhile to buy a real disk utility!?!

If you don't care about salvaging your data, then just reformat the disk (zeroing not necessary -- nothing you've mentioned indicates any need to do this, thought it would cause no harm) and reinstall everything. Nothing you've said indicates any type of hardware failure. You just have a corrupted disk, and the two ways to fix it are to format it or use a hardcore utility like DiskWarrior.

tooki

P.S. Zeroing is a formatting option. Normally, formatting just erases the directory of the disk, declaring that it's all available to be overwritten. Zeroing actually goes in and writes 0 into every byte on the disk, which isn't really necessary unless you want to make it practically impossible to recover the data, or if you are suspecting hardware problems and want to "exercise" the disk.

[tooki]

Originally posted by bighead:
Have you zeroed the hard disk? This is the first thing that SHOULD be done unless there is some sort of audible indication of a drive failure.

Nonsense. There's seldom any need to do that other than the reasons I mentioned above. It's not harmful, but it is time-consuming, and usually totally unnecessary.

tooki

[Tenacious Dyl]

Alright... I will reformat it shortly. Thanks for the help Tooki and others.

Also tooki: Freaking $80 is money to some of us. Between my classes, insurance, gas, and meal plan... I have $10 extra dollars for the next two weeks (in cash). I am very against spending money right now. If I drove up to the apple store... I would go with a friend in their car. I am waiting on a crazy big paycheck next friday night. At that time I can buy these CDS that I need.

[Tenacious Dyl]

More Updates, and More Bad News:

I ran Micromat's Tech Tool (Deluxe) Off of the Apple Care CD this mornign (I got ahold of one from a friend, hehe).

Here are the results:

Chips: PROBLEMS: A problem was found with the clock chip of your system.

Drive: PROBLEMS: Techtool discovered problems with volume structiures which it cannot repair.

Please note... I had re-formatted the harddrive earlier to HFS/HFS+ *and* zeroed it out. After all of that time and formatting.. it failed this Tech Tool Deluxe Test.

Edit: The above results were running tech-tool deluxe off of my external drive and *testing* the laptop drive. I did an additional test, testing the external drive... just to check the clock chip problem and again... the Clock Chip failed the test.

[Tenacious Dyl]

Went to the apple store today. To date, my worst experience.

I explained that when booting whether from the laptops drive or an external it took 2-3 tries at least... and has been worse the last few days.

I explained the results of tech-tool deluxe (apparently a clock chip not working as well as a hard-drive tech tool deluxe could not fix)

I brought my powerbook, and all of the manuals, extras, cds, etc.

The first apple guy that helped me was no offense, a dick. He asked me if I tested it, after me telling him about the test results.... then he decided to test it. Note.. with a testing disk for a DIFFERENT MODEL POWERBOOK. He told me that "the results shouldn't be too different from my model and he hopes it will work".

I then got to run around the store for 30 minutes playing with gadgets while he tested my powerbook with another powerbooks disk.

Then he called me over, and told me that the memory, drive, dvd drive, and chipset tests came out good.

I was like uhm... I have some major problems going on... so we talked a little bit. I asked if he could run more tests.

He ASKED ME where my tech tool deluxe cd was, because they didn't have one. Could have fooled me ... behind him was a shelf with 2 Tech Tool Deluxe CDS on it.

He ran another test with YET ANOTEHR CD HE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT... this cd was a "Dated CD He Found In The Back" and that "It would work with computers from certain months, but not others". He ran the test.... of course... by starting up holding the C k.

It was funny though... when he chose to boot from the older cd, he made the comment "your hard-drive didn't appear at all.... that isn't good".

He ran the outdated tests, which appeared to be exactly the same as the last test. And told "I am very sorry but this is all we can do". He left, and I never talked to him again.

I realized hrm... something is wrong here... and shortly after... another apple employee asked me if that was my powerbook at their testing area. I explained the exact same problems to him... and this man was better about it.

He said from what he gathers I have a logic board problem (mostly due to the kernal panic which lists my cpu). But that because the hardwear tests that the other man used didn't turn up a definete logic board problem, if I left it with them, they might not necessarily repair it.

We talked a lot longer... and this man was much more suited to work than the last... he told me to drive home, take pictures of my computer's kernal panics on startup, and take digital videos of it booting up and freezing in the process (pictures can't really show a freeze). He said to bring in the laptop again soon, with the pictures and videos on a cd for him. And he would see if he could send it "to the depot to be hopefully fixed". Again.. he made no promises that my problem would go away. Eventhough the other apple employee clearly noticed my hard-drive not being there as a boot option and said "your hard-drive didn't appear at all.... that isn't good".

So... I left my house at noon and got back home at 7pm. My results: Take pictures of your problem and then you might get it fixed next time.

Can anyone possibly recommend anything to fix this situation, short of buying another disk utility and re-writing my drive over and over again. This hasn't solved anything. I want a working machine.