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TICKET ARCHIVE -> techtool deluxe 3.03 causes system crash

glowworm - Feb 14, 2006 - 12:22 pm

i have since seen other examples of this problem at macintouch, but i am hoping someone here has a solution. I have 10.4.4 and was having issues, so I booted from and ran the techtool deluxe 3.03 disc that comes with apple care. after running it and it finding problems with the volume structure, i allowed it to fix the problem. the next scan found no problems. upon rebooting, the computer immediately crashes, i get a grey screen and the restart message. i booted from the tiger install disc and ran disc utility, but get an error, invalid B-tree node size. after some reading, it's apparant this version of tech tool was not meant for tiger, and the structure of tiger is very different. i have an external firewire hard drive with an install of panther on it, and i am able to boot off this drive. the internal hard drive mounts, and all the data shows up, so if anything i will be able to back everything up and initialize the drive. i have heard people with this problem try running disk warrior and not being able to fix it, but this discussion was from august. is there anythin i can delete to get disk warrior or some other program to rebuild my system properly?

philippe99 - Feb 14, 2006 - 1:29 pm

Mike, welcome to macosx.com

However, your story is well known: TTDeluxe 3.03 which came with AppleCare is not Tiger compatible !
Neither more recent version of TechTool - even the pro version- compatible with Tiger cannot rebuild your system.
In some circumstances, people use DW to repair, but in another ones, DW fails.

If your machine is new, or under warranty, call Apple: perhaps NOW do they have a solution.

If not, unfortunately, backup your data on the external drive, wipe the driver and reinstall Tiger on the internal drive: that's the best solution.


Ah, yes: open the window and throw away this stupid TTD cd ;-)

Regards
Philippe

glowworm - Feb 14, 2006 - 1:37 pm

thanks for your response, although the answer is what i was afraid of. i've been reading through some discussions on macfixit, and someone mentioned removing the attributes file and then running DW. Is there a utility that can locate this file? Also there was another person who had this to say:

"Out of frustration of not finding the answer I bought a copy of DiskWarrior and ran the application. I received an error message that said to contact Alsoft Technical Support.

I called them and spoke to a very nice technician on the phone who walked me through gathering some information using Terminal (which I had never used before - but he spelled out the commands). I eventually sent him a file we had created that had my directory or some such thing - just a bunch of numbers if you ask me.

In under an hour he called me back and had emailed something back. He walked me through a few more commands and then had me run DiskWarrior again. This time, no error message. And in about 15 minutes, through the DiskWarrior preview I SAW ALL OF MY FILES!!!!!"


any idea what he did?

thanks again for your help.

(i'm at work at the moment so i can't try anything until this evening)

philippe99 - Feb 14, 2006 - 2:05 pm

What I know about this problem is that TTD 3.03 creates a problem in the high level of the disk hierarchy that DW is not ready to encounter.

Perhaps the tech guy give you some Terminal commands to temporarly repare the problem and allows DW to fully repair the drive.

May I ask you if you can email me this terminal commands - well, the procedure the tech guy asks you to follow -: I will post them on macosx FAQ to help other people which can face the same issue
If you accept, please wipe all personnal/confidential information in the technical note, like your machine ID, ... well, you know what I mean

And champagne ! You're the first person facing the problem I know for which an Apple tech guy solves the problem.

Regards
Philippe philippe99 (at) macosx (dot) com

glowworm - Feb 14, 2006 - 2:19 pm

unfortunately that was not me, that was a quote from the macfixit micromat forum taken from someone who had some success. i don't know what he was asked to do. this discussion was from august of 2005.

here is the link.

http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/sh...&Number=711084

philippe99 - Feb 15, 2006 - 1:28 am

So now, after these Terminal commands and DW, all run fine ?
Philippe