macbook pro is stuck oin start up

seannash

out of nowhere my macbook pro stopped working.

it powers up and gets to my desktop screen(minus the icons) and stops.

i get the spinning wheel and thats as far as i get.


ive tried command,alt,p&r and also command and s but it didnt seem to do anything.


anybody got any advice of things i can try before i have to bring it somewhere

Sad Professor

Insert the install disc and boot from it by holding c on startup. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities menu and click on repair disk. Also repair permissions while you are there.

I suspect either the OS is messed up or the hard drive is dying.

seannash

Sad Professor wrote: »

Insert the install disc and boot from it by holding c on startup. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities menu and click on repair disk. Also repair permissions while you are there.

I suspect either the OS is messed up or the hard drive is dying.

jesus dont say its dying :D.

i dont have the start up disk any more,laptop is a few years old alright but it was working fine last night.it just froze all of a sudden so i disconnected the power thinking id rebooth it and this is where im at now

muggyog

also command and s but it didnt seem to do anything

What exactly did you do when you went into single user mode (apple + S)?
did you type sbin/fsck -f , and if so what output did you get?

Sad Professor

You really need an OS X disc. They are very important. You may not be able to fix this problem without one.

Try booting into safe mode by holding shift on startup. If it boots up successfully run Disk Utility and verify the disk and repair permissions.

mailforkev

Maybe try to start it up in Safe Mode (turn on while holding Shift key until the timer appears).

If this works then restart it as usual.

It's a pity that you don't have the operating system disks, as a reinstall would probably be your best bet.

Edit: well that's freaky, two of us posting pretty much the same thing at the same time!

seannash

so when i hold command and s i was prompted by an online guide to enter /sbin/fsck -fy

it went through the checks and i got the total volume macintosh hd appears to be ok.

i tried boot in safe mode too.i got to the user login screen but then got the spinning wheel again grrrr.

brav

If you can't get hold of any discs anywhere, you can ring Apple and I think it costs around 40 or 50eur for replacement discs
(about 20 each I think)

seannash

brav wrote: »

If you can't get hold of any discs anywhere, you can ring Apple and I think it costs around 40 or 50eur for replacement discs
(about 20 each I think)

cool i might give that a go if all else fails

muggyog

There is a way round having to spend money on this however its a bit convoluted. Basically you have to create a new user from the command line.

To do this go into single user mode ( apple + s ) and at the prompt type mount -uw /. This where you can do great damage since you can now write to the hard drive. This is how to create a user test in the admin group with unique ID of 1010 and password is password.

dscl . -create /Users/test
dscl . -create /Users/test UserShell /bin/bash
dscl . -create /Users/test RealName "test"
dscl . -create /Users/test UniqueID "1010"
dscl . -create /Users/test PrimaryGroupID 80
dscl . -create /Users/test NFSHomeDirectory /Users/test
dscl . -passwd /Users/test password
dscl . -append /Groups/admin GroupMembership test

Now you have created this account, you need to be able to access it. Do this by disabling auto login ( I assume you have only one user account auto logged on startup ) by starting in safe mode . Remember that the timing is important when holding down the "Shift" key, which will do three different things depending on when the keystroke is registered.

1.After the startup chime, it boots in "Safe" mode.
2.When the blue progress bar appears, it disables automatic login.
3.After that, it disables "Login Items" for the automatic login account.

When you get a login window use the test account. If you are successful you will have to activate the root account to view items in the damaged account since you will not have access permissions with the test account.

seannash

muggyog wrote: »

There is a way round having to spend money on this however its a bit convoluted. Basically you have to create a new user from the command line.

To do this go into single user mode ( apple + s ) and at the prompt type mount -uw /. This where you can do great damage since you can now write to the hard drive. This is how to create a user test in the admin group with unique ID of 1010 and password is password.

dscl . -create /Users/test
dscl . -create /Users/test UserShell /bin/bash
dscl . -create /Users/test RealName "test"
dscl . -create /Users/test UniqueID "1010"
dscl . -create /Users/test PrimaryGroupID 80
dscl . -create /Users/test NFSHomeDirectory /Users/test
dscl . -passwd /Users/test password
dscl . -append /Groups/admin GroupMembership test

Now you have created this account, you need to be able to access it. Do this by disabling auto login ( I assume you have only one user account auto logged on startup ) by starting in safe mode . Remember that the timing is important when holding down the "Shift" key, which will do three different things depending on when the keystroke is registered.

1.After the startup chime, it boots in "Safe" mode.
2.When the blue progress bar appears, it disables automatic login.
3.After that, it disables "Login Items" for the automatic login account.

When you get a login window use the test account. If you are successful you will have to activate the root account to view items in the damaged account since you will not have access permissions with the test account.

im gonna try this method but when i type in mount-uw/ it just
says no such file or directory

so i tried putting /sbin in front of it and i got a message of hfs:removed 1 orphaned unlinked file then it asked me for the rootnumber again

muggyog

Computers are soooooo literal! Type mount space -uv space / this brings you to command prompt.

Type LS at the command prompt and you will see the top level of your hard drive

You could also CD to the preferences folder of your user account and delete it. Maybe try that later!

seannash

muggyog wrote: »

Computers are soooooo literal! Type mount space -uv space / this brings you to command prompt.

Type LS at the command prompt and you will see the top level of your hard drive

You could also CD to the preferences folder of your user account and delete it. Maybe try that later!

thanks man,ill give that a blast