HELP: Mac won't boot!

Hi All,

Short version: My Macbook Pro, with or without an OSX CD in the drive, hangs during boot allowing me to see only the grey Apple screen and the spinner.

Long version: I was going about my usual work in Photoshop and Illustrator when PS crashed. When I restarted, it said there wasn't enough RAM. So I closed some apps and restarted PS, this time successfully. Did some more work, then left the computer for a few minutes.

When I came back, the screensaver had activated as usual. Typed my password, pressed Enter, and then was greeted by a totally black screen with only my mouse pointer visible.

I moved the pointer around, clicked where I knew one of the menus would be -- nothing happened. I tried Command Option Escape -- no change. Command Tab brought up the Application Switcher, but it didn't do anything.

I tried hitting the power button to bring up the Logout / Restart / Shut down box. Nothing.

Without any other recourse, I held down the power button until the Mac turned off. Thirty seconds later, I tried to turn it back on. I was greeted by the usual Mac tone, the grey Apple screen, and the spinner. And then it hung there. One minute. Two minutes.

After five minutes I turned off the system again and broke out my OSX disc and restarted. I put the disc in once there was power, and got the same thing.

Anybody have any idea what's going on? Is this an OSX issue? Hardware? I'm lost.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

ZS

Zap the Pram by holding down Option>Alt (the one with the Apple on it) P and R immediately following the startup up sound, and keep held down until two more chimes sound, and see if it then boots.

If all well, boot from Leopard disk and run Repair Disk from there.

That doesn't appear to have worked. I held down all four keys, and it rebooted itself twice automatically, but then left me in the same position. Still on the grey Apple screen with the spinner...

Found an option for "verbose mode" on another forum. It's hanging up on "disk0s2: I/O error."

Any suggestions? Does that mean my HDD is fried, or possibly a loose connection, something else?

And why would that stop the CD drive with the OSX disc from loading?

ZS

Are you holding down the C key when booting from the CD/DVD? It will not boot off the DVD unless you hold down C right after the startup sound till it starts to boot.

Holding down C did the trick. God, I'm such a noob.

I'll report back on the disk repair results

Tried repairing disk permissions first.

Here's what it reported:

Pepairing permissions for "Mac HD"
Permissions differ on "private/var/log/secure.log", should be -rw---, th...
Permissions differ on "System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.usbmuxd.p...
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resour...
Warning: SUID file "usr/bin/lppasswd" has been modified and will not be repaired,
Group differs on "private/etc/cups", should be 0, group is 26.
Permissions differ on "private/var/spool/cups/cache/rss", should be drwxr-xr...

Permissions repair complete.

Click to expand...

I have no idea what any of that means, but I'm proceeding to verify disk and then repair disk next...

Any ongoing thoughts you might have will be appreciated.

Thanks again for the help,

ZS

Disk verification yielded:

Verifying volume "Mac HD"
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Incorrect block count for file kdc.log
(It should be 262 instead of 131)
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Mac HD needs to be repaired.
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.

Click to expand...

Now proceeding with repair...

Repair results:

Verify and Repair volume "Mac HD"
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Incorrect block count for file kdc.log
(It should be 262 instead of 131)
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Repairing volume.
Rechecking volume.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Mac HD was repaired successfully.

Click to expand...

Now to try rebooting...

Still same problem.

I guess I'll have to reinstall OSX.

Will archive and install mess up any of my existing settings and/or programs?

After Repair Disk from install DVD all should be well - why install again?

Because it wasn't well again. The problem (never-ending grey Apple screen and spinner) continued even after the repair.

:sigh:

Archive and install seems to have done the trick. I'm back into my system.

Thanks for reading my little panic attack, and for your ideas and suggestions.

Regards,

Z