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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Constant Startup Problems!

veej007 - Aug 17, 2005 - 10:25 pm

Hi there.

G3 iBook, 700 mHz, 640 MB RAM, OS X.3.9

I reformat this thing twice a week, because it keeps hanging on the grey startup screen. Sometimes if I leave it for an hour or so, it will finally get to the login screen.

Minimal software installations just stuff I need for work, I don't even install Microsoft Word. Any ideas?

veej007 - Aug 17, 2005 - 11:06 pm

zapping pram didn't work

veej007 - Aug 17, 2005 - 11:17 pm

I should also mention that reinstalling the OS always fixes it, so I don't think this is a problem with the hard drive.

veej007 - Aug 21, 2005 - 12:07 am

Further news:

First of all, I should note that the programs can be horribly unresponsive as well. GarageBand can take a good five minutes to open a song with one piano track.

Also, I think this may have something to do with disk permissions. In one instance, doing a repair permissions operation fixed the problem immediately, though it only lasted for a couple of hours.

When it came back, I tried doing a repair permissions using the disk utility on the OS cd -- ie, not booted from the drive -- and that seems to have fixed it yet again.

Any ideas? Might an upgrade to Tiger fix this?

paulogdenfletcher - Aug 21, 2005 - 12:45 pm

I will suggest you look at this link.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106464

Thanks,
Paul Fletcher

veej007 - Aug 21, 2005 - 3:28 pm

this has reached a new level of absurdity:

brand new 10.3.5 install last night

having the same problem today

i did NOTHING in between!

what does that indicate to you?

thanks for your help.

paulogdenfletcher - Aug 22, 2005 - 1:04 pm

Okay, so you've completely erased your system and reinstalled the system right? This will delete anything that you have on the computer, but since I think you already did that lets try this. Restart the computer with the installation CD in the drive & hold down the "c" key to start to the CD. Once the installation program is up, go to the top menu bar and select "Utilities" & pull down to "Disk Utility" Select the hard-drive that your having problems with & go to the erase tab. Once their select "Security Options" & choose "Zero All Data". This can take some time depending how big your hard drive is. Once its completed restart your computer holding down the "Option" "Command" & "O" "F" keys. This will boot you into open firmware mode. From here type "restart-all". Your computer will restart, when it restarts hold down the "C" key to boot to the installation CD's again. Now tell the Installation CD's to install onto the hard drive that we just erased. Under Installation Options choose the option that says "Erase & Install" We want to choose that option so we can erase the volume one more time & then install. Now it should install perfectly, & let me know what happens when you boot it up again. If you are still getting boot problems after doing this then it narrows it down to a hardware problem. One big thing that can cause this is bad RAM. So if this doesn't fix the problem, I would suggest that you take the computer over to the nearest Apple store & have the "Geniuses" test the RAM, & other hard-ware that might cause this problem. My guess would be that its the RAM if this solution doesn't fix the problem. Let me know how it goes, I hope I could help.

Thanks,
Paul Fletcher

veej007 - Aug 22, 2005 - 2:18 pm

Paul,

I ran fsck numerous times and didn't find anything. Then I ran Disk Warrior (booting from CD), and after hitting "rebuild" the computer rebooted immediately without the lengthy operations I had expected.

After that, fsck has been finding extent overlapping errors (or something of that sort, I wrote the exact term down but I'm writing this from work and don't have it in front of me.

Anyway, fsck only found these errors after I (sort of) ran Disk Warrior, and it can't repair them. I hear that 10.4 has a new Disk Utility which can deal with those errors, so I'm going to borrow a friend's Tiger DVD and see if that helps.

I zeroed my drive three times last night. I also tried the three-way random or eight-way random (or whatever it is) write operation, but for some reason that hangs. I've read that reformatting doesn't always fix overlapping extent errors.

Removing my extra RAM yesterday didn't fix the problem. It's a new hard drive, which I put in place because the old one failed, so I doubt that's the source of the problem here (or at least I hope, since labor for replacing that is expensive!)

Did Disk Warrior CAUSE the errors that fsck is now finding, or did it merely make them detectable by fsck?

Thanks for your help.

-Vijith

paulogdenfletcher - Aug 22, 2005 - 3:20 pm

I've never know Disk Warrior to cause errors, only to fix them. Because your having these problems & zeroing all data didn't work. You've completely re-installed the system etc... I don't understand why you would be having these problems. I would suggest that you bring your computer into the Apple store and have them take a look at possible hardware problems. I think they will be able to help you out.

Thanks,
Paul Fletcher

--> Sorry I couldn't help as much as I would have liked to.

veej007 - Aug 27, 2005 - 12:15 am

Hello,

The problems have continued. I zeroed my drive several times and then installed 10.3. Same thing. I then borrowed a Tiger upgrade DVD from a friend because I heard that it included a new Disk Utility that can deal with extent overlapping errors. I ran zeroed the drive and then ran the 10.4 Disk Utility repair operation and it didn't find any problems, so then I did a clean install of 10.3 and immediately upgraded to 10.4 in the hopes that a different operating system might fix this.

As you've probably figured out by now, it did not.

Everything passes the hardware test.

This thread sounds very similar to mine:
http://www.macosx.com/content/faq.ph...-Slow-Mac.html

Any ideas? If not, is there a way to perhaps refer this to another tech rather than just closing the thread?

Thanks again.

paulogdenfletcher - Aug 27, 2005 - 1:01 pm

Sorry I couldn't help, I"ll open the topic again.

Thanks,
Paul

veej007 - Aug 27, 2005 - 2:07 pm

Paul,

Thanks for doing that. Now how do I go about flagging down another tech or three to take a look at this problem?

Starting on cycle 20 of the looped hardware test...

-Vijith