Asking for Spinning Disk advice

I am trying to remotely help a disabled friend with a fairly new Imac. In the last few days he has been getting the spinning disk after a few minutes of operation. At that time OSX is still apparently running, but nothing can be accessed at all. When I got to his house to look at it, the spinning beach ball was solid. I rebooted and the machine came up fine. I shut down the few apps that he autostarts like Ichat and Mail. It ran for the whole hour that I was there. A couple of hours later it failed again. We did a PRAM reset and a SMC reset. That made it reboot much faster than normal. The machine ran for a couple of hours before failing again.

I have used a Mac for a year, but have never had a problem with one so my troubleshooting skills are minimal for Apple products. The reason for the remote help is that I can access the 'net from my Mac for info - if I go over to his house I have no 'net access. The option is to take it back to the store for service, but I want to give it a shot first. At this point I am not even sure that Best Buy is a service point for Macs. The closest Apple store is hundreds of miles away.

Possibly repairing disk permissions is next, but I couldn't get the machine to come back up over the phone to try it. I will go back by his house tomorrow to give it another try.

So, any experts got a 1,2,3 list of things to try? Googling brings up lots of hits, but I would rather use knowledgable advice than just shotgun it.

Fairly new and under warranty take it back for him. You might also boot from the install disc, and run Repair Disk and see what is reported as the hard drive may be failing. Has he perhaps installed any antivirus software?

It's not a permissions issue, I'm fairly sure of that, so I endorse Harry's advice about using the Install Disk > Disk Utility > First Aid. Verify Disk before you try to Repair Disk though.

If repairs are necessary, and Disk Utilities can do it (not guaranteed), then repair permissions later, preferably using OnyX Titanium Software.

If Disk Utilities finds faults it cannot repair, consider using Disk Warrior (the best there is). I say this because you're far away from Mac technical assistance, and the ~US$100 for DW may be cheaper than carting the Mac to a repair centre - and return!

PS. please list your friend's Mac and MacOS specs. It helps us to help you help him better.

cptkrf said:

The option is to take it back to the store for service, but I want to give it a shot first. At this point I am not even sure that Best Buy is a service point for Macs.

Click to expand...

If it was purchased at Best Buy, they will service it. How could they not and stay in business? They also offer extended warranties, but most people get AppleCare if they get anything.

Oops. I meant to say, At this point I am not even sure that OUR Best Buy is a service point for Macs. Some rural BBs don't handle Apple. Turns out that ours does.

Anyway, by the time I got by this afternoon, the machine would not boot past the Apple logo. It couldn't be brought up to the point to run Onyx. There is probably a way to run it from the DVD boot, but I haven't looking into that yet.

I booted with the Snow Leopard DVD and started the Disk Utilities repair. It ran the DVD just fine so it looks like the machine proper is working ok. So it appears to be either a screwed up hard disk, or one that is actually failing.

When the machine failed yesterday, Time Machine just ran and ran without ever completing till the Imac was forced down. I hope that he has a valid save on it.

We will know in a few hours.

Update.

The permission repair, run from the Snow Leopard DVD, ran for about 20 minutes and locked up solid. No keyboard access and the mouse cursor is frozen. Nothing would work but force power off.

It has got to be a hardware problem. Anybody disagree?

Suggested running Repair Disk when booted from the SL install disk. What did that report?

Not me. It's fair to say that your initial post pointed toward hardware failure, rather than an OS problem.

Your post #5 states "Snow Leopard", and that "It ran the DVD just fine". Some questions are necessary:
1. Has your friend's machine got SLpd OS on it?
2. Is the SLpd a full retail dvd, or is it a machine-specific disk? If the latter, is it suitable for your friends' Mac?

It's time to remove as much of your friend's non-OS files as possible, as Time Machine is no longer functioning. If the keyboard is still functioning after reboot, see if the iMac will boot into Safe mode (hold the S key straight after the startup chime). Transfer as much as possible using flash drives, or to an external dvd drive.

Let us know if any progress is made.

hughvane said:

Not me. It's fair to say that your initial post pointed toward hardware failure, rather than an OS problem.

Your post #5 states "Snow Leopard", and that "It ran the DVD just fine". Some questions are necessary:
1. Has your friend's machine got SLpd OS on it?
2. Is the SLpd a full retail dvd, or is it a machine-specific disk? If the latter, is it suitable for your friends' Mac?

It's time to remove as much of your friend's non-OS files as possible, as Time Machine is no longer functioning. If the keyboard is still functioning after reboot, see if the iMac will boot into Safe mode (hold the S key straight after the startup chime). Transfer as much as possible using flash drives, or to an external dvd drive.

Let us know if any progress is made.

Click to expand...

By running the DVD just fine, I meant to compare with the normal boot. The machine will not boot at all from the hard drive, but will boot the DVD ok.
His Snow Leopard is the upgrade that was offered to buyers of new Imacs just before SL was available for purchase. And the machine is current on updates, except for the new Safari that just came out. I saw that much before it died the last time.

Tomorrow I will try the disk repair again, since I am not sure which he picked. He might have clicked on repair permissions instead, although that shouldn't have locked up the machine.

Good idea about the safe mode and flash to save his stuff. I am worried that the Time Machine may have been corrupted during all the problems. Fortunately, about all he has to save is email, and I believe that he is using AT&T webmail, so that will be safe somewhere up there. I may bring his Time Machine to my IMac so I can look at it here to see if it is valid. His home folder is small enough to save entirely to a USB stick.

Thanks for the help, everybody. More info tomorrow.

Update.

Ran disk repair from DVD. Found a DB error and fixed it. Rebooted machine and it ran about 2 minutes before locking up.

Ran disk repair from DVD again. Said that HD was ok - no errors. Rebooted machine and it stuck on the gray apple with the spinner.

Time for hardware service.

FYI

Turns out that there was a local Apple service center in town, which was great since I was warned by many not to let the Best Buy service department get hold of it under any circumstances.

Describing the problem, they immediately changed out the hard drive and it has been working ever since.

The great thing was, that Time Machine put the new hard drive exactly back to what the old one was the last time we got a good backup. I have used TM many times to recover a programming source file that I had totally hosed up, but this is the first time I used it to recover an entire machine.

Very impressive compared to all the recovery programs that I have used in the past, on various machines.

Yeah, too late to chime in, but yeah it sounded pretty obvious that the hard drive was failing.

Glad you kept it out of BB's clutches.