help, crossed out circle /frozen booting imac 27"

Hello,
I did something dumb. I turned off access for user/group "everyone" in Macintosh hd and all enclosed items. Snow leopard 10.6.4 or something .. now i cant even start the OS. I ran system repair, permission repair as well as permission/password reset. However it hangs up on permission reset for me (owner). I tried navigating the terminal from the install disk aswell, but i do not know how to use it. I would like to avoid running a system restore, so any help would be much appreciated. I dont even know if i could run a time machine restore given that the whole hd might be denying itself acess.

If someone could give me exact instructions for how to allow group user everyone read access to Macintosh hd through the install cd terminal, i should be good.

Thanks

Boot the machine with your Snow Leopard DVD and reinstall. Snow Leopard does an automatic archive and install replacing the system files, however, it will not destroy your docs and data. After reinstalling, run software update.

thanks for the advice. I am cautious however seeing as i may be denying the super user access to mac hd.. As I'm pretty sure the user group takes precedence over any individual user in the system design/hierarchy... It seems like a kinda stupid design to claim that a super user owns a all access rights over a system, when a group called "everyone" takes precedent and can cancel this out... Unless there maybe a hardware issue with my computer.

Can I run a network boot?

Ok so I ran a reinstall. Now instead of defaulting to the crossed out circle. It is just stuck on loading the OS.

Going to attempt a wipe and time machine restore if it doesn't load in the next 5 mins

I think there might be a hardware issue.. You might want to make sure that you were using the everyone account as only the admin can change read/write priveledges and maybe want to look at Setting Up User Accounts on Your Mac - For Dummies

Not sure what issue you are having and most likely you were in an admin account. Turning both read/write off for everyone shouldn't have done that..

protosm said:

thanks for the advice. I am cautious however seeing as i may be denying the super user access to mac hd.. As I'm pretty sure the user group takes precedence over any individual user in the system design/hierarchy... It seems like a kinda stupid design to claim that a super user owns a all access rights over a system, when a group called "everyone" takes precedent and can cancel this out... Unless there maybe a hardware issue with my computer.

Can I run a network boot?

Click to expand...

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Aqua said:

I think there might be a hardware issue.. You might want to make sure that you were using the everyone account as only the admin can change read/write priveledges and maybe want to look at Setting Up User Accounts on Your Mac - For Dummies

Not sure what issue you are having and most likely you were in an admin account. Turning both read/write off for everyone shouldn't have done that..

Click to expand...

Yes I was on my account (the only account and only admin, besides the suprauser). At the same time I was changing read/write privileges to all enclosed items, I tried to delete something which bugged out.

I should also note that I was unable to reset access to default for my account through the install CD. All very suspect, but I'm currently restoring my system from a backup and getting back to work ;D or whatever it was i was doing before.