[battles]

Hey fellas, I'm new here and looking for a little MAC help, here's my situation:

Powermac G4
Dual 1.25
OS 10.3.9 (I think. Its Panther with whatever updates mac has issued in the past 2 years)
1gig RAM (512 from mac and 512 of another brand that is about 8 months old)

I've had this for just over 2 years and it has been flawless, up until about 3 days ago. Here are my current problems thus far:

1. When starting the computer, rather than going straight to the desktop, etc. it is just a black screen that says:

Darwin/BSD (myfirstname-mylastname-computer.local) (console)

login:

At this point I can type in anything for the login name, it will then not let me type anything for the password, it will tell me "login incorrect" and continue on to my desktop.

2. As soon as it gets to the desktop everything looks normal except my dock, instead of looking how I set it up to look it appears to have taken the shape of the standard dock that I saw when first getting and turning the computer on 2 years ago.

3. As soon as I try to go in and run UTILITIES - DISK UTILITIES to try and repair disk permissions it will run for about 3 seconds and then freeze.



I haven't done anything differently within the past week to bring on such undesirable results so I'm not sure what the problem is. As soon as I try anything within the internet I get the colorwheel that spins endlessly. All of my harddrive files are still in tact (at least they appear to be). I can't even run iTunes to see that my music is really still there w/o the machine freezing.


Ugg. I'm sure this seems pretty vague but its all I can really tell at this point. If anyone has any ideas as to what might be wrong with my computer or any suggestions as to how to repair it I would greatly appreciate the help.

Thanks, and let me know if there is anything else I can tell you to help and diagnose the problem.

-Chuck

[battles]

Any ideas guys? Would a simple upgrade to Tiger do the trick? Bad RAM? Corrupt HD?



thanks again

[chinajon]

I copied this from an old article.
Be careful!

Suppose you were in the middle of some project and lost power, and oops you were not connected to a UPS.
You wait for the lights to come on, you power up your Mac, and... console.
So, what to do? I mean, after you panic, cuz, uuh, when was the last time you backed it up, right?

Keep reading at your own risk!
These opinions may not fit your situation.
I am not responsible for any damage or loss you may suffer -
if you try these hopefully helpful bits of advice...

'nuf said?

Ya wanna try something? ok. You have been warned.

First, see if you can it to fly:
1. Restart your Mac, when you get the BLUE SCREEN
2. Press and hold the Command (Apple) and "s" keys.
If the Mac will fly, you will see the Unix command line prompt (local host:/ root# /).
You're now in single-user mode.
At the local host:/ root# / prompt, run fsck:
Type: /sbin/fsck -fy
Press Return.
If errors are found, you'll see the message
++++ FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED. ++++
Run the File System Check command repeatedly until all errors are repaired and you see the message:
The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK
At the command prompt local host:/ root# / type the following: reboot
Press Return.
Believe in Miracles!
If your Mac is happy, so are you. Back up everything!
What if... it didn't boot up or could not repair itself?
First try the OSX Startup CD. Use Disk Utility to try to repair the HD.
(If you have the DiskTools disc that comes with AppleCare, use that.)
If your Mac is happy, so are you. Back everything up!
Second... So far, your Mac's HD is ... not dead exactly, but off in HD dream land...
Well, I think there are two paths.
Path one: forget it. Format the drive, reinstall the OS and replace everything from your back-up CD's.
........You didn't back up? You're kidding, right?

Second path... you want to recover stuff off the drive, and you don't have the $$$ or time to send it off to the Emergency Room at your local PC Data Recovery Hospital. So what to do?
Set up an external HD to boot up from. Run Disk Utility from there. If you still have no joy, Install a 'disk Doctor' type application on the external such as Data Rescue II by Prosoft Engineering (About $100) �Do what they tell you to do in the App's User Manual. Take a look at the Data Rescue II User Manual. It is very helpful, and will let you know what you are up against.
Remember to save the recovered files to the external HD.
Until you have backed up, try not to write to the crashed HD.

Differentiation: Repairing the directory may bring the HD back to life. This is not the same as recovering files from the disk. In this case, the directory is re-written so that there is a directory looking at what the computer decides are the right files to be in the directory. In a file recovery, the 'Disk Doctor' type application is driving the disk and reading files from it into a memory buffer. You then select from a list what you want to recover. You may recover partial files or multiple copies of files. But you decide which files need to be recover.

Think about it!

'Nuf said?