01-22-2011, 12:51 PM
I'm posting this because I really need help. I'm terribly exhausted because of my sleep problems, but I will do my best to explain what has happened and what steps I've taken. I've been falling asleep at the keyboard, so I'll have to fill in the details on Saturday.
Briefly, I'll explain that I've given Mavis an Intel Mini and also an external Newer "ministack" for its greater capacity. I have her system booting from the miniStack by firewire.
It seems that my S/O's Intel Mini had started acting up. She came to me saying that she was getting "beach balls" and her computer seemed to be very slow and would I see what was wrong with it.
I began by running DU's "Repair Permissions" and then I booted from my OS install disk and used DU's" Repair Hard drive." After running for a while, DU reported that the repair had failed! and that the problematic files could not be fixed. It listed in red that there were serious problems with multiple files.
As part of my basic troubleshooting I "zapped the PRAM," but it was obvious that the problem would require a lot more effort. At this point the Mini crashed and I got the "crash" screen telling me to shut down Mavis' computer.
I went back to my MacPro to google for some ideas and guess what? The MacPro crashed, too! Thus the topic heading and the poll.
I have no way of knowing how her files became corrupted, but I could see that Mavis had been putting a variety of files away without being aware of the operating system's restrictions, plus she had been using "Trash" as storage.
She had never emptied the trash folder or emptied her "deleted" email folder in Entourage.
I have no idea what else she may have inadvertently done that could have caused the corruption.
Looking over her setup, I found that the power cord for the second miniStack that I installed as a backup drive, had been unplugged. So now there was no up-to-date backup to work with.
To make up for this I physically moved her critical files (Pictures and Documents) over to the second hard drive in order to safeguard them. Then I booted from DW and ran it.
It appeared at first that I had succeeded in fixing the problem, but I soon discovered that there were still major problems.
At this point I decided to reinstall the OS and to upgrade to OS 10.6. Once again I ran into strangeness. The drive options to install on left out the Mini itself and showed only the two miniStacks. Then it wouldn't let me install on the primary drive, so I had to choose the supposed backup drive. Even then, there was no option to "archive and install."
After the Snow Leopard install was done, I couldn't find the Mini's hard drive in the Finder, so I've left it till tomorrow to continue.
I don't know if I've made some sense to you because I'm so tired and I know that I've left details out, but if you can get an idea about what I've done so far, I'd appreciate any tips you may have.
Now it's off to bed! :zzz:
Briefly, I'll explain that I've given Mavis an Intel Mini and also an external Newer "ministack" for its greater capacity. I have her system booting from the miniStack by firewire.
It seems that my S/O's Intel Mini had started acting up. She came to me saying that she was getting "beach balls" and her computer seemed to be very slow and would I see what was wrong with it.
I began by running DU's "Repair Permissions" and then I booted from my OS install disk and used DU's" Repair Hard drive." After running for a while, DU reported that the repair had failed! and that the problematic files could not be fixed. It listed in red that there were serious problems with multiple files.
As part of my basic troubleshooting I "zapped the PRAM," but it was obvious that the problem would require a lot more effort. At this point the Mini crashed and I got the "crash" screen telling me to shut down Mavis' computer.
I went back to my MacPro to google for some ideas and guess what? The MacPro crashed, too! Thus the topic heading and the poll.
I have no way of knowing how her files became corrupted, but I could see that Mavis had been putting a variety of files away without being aware of the operating system's restrictions, plus she had been using "Trash" as storage.
She had never emptied the trash folder or emptied her "deleted" email folder in Entourage.
I have no idea what else she may have inadvertently done that could have caused the corruption.
Looking over her setup, I found that the power cord for the second miniStack that I installed as a backup drive, had been unplugged. So now there was no up-to-date backup to work with.
To make up for this I physically moved her critical files (Pictures and Documents) over to the second hard drive in order to safeguard them. Then I booted from DW and ran it.
It appeared at first that I had succeeded in fixing the problem, but I soon discovered that there were still major problems.
At this point I decided to reinstall the OS and to upgrade to OS 10.6. Once again I ran into strangeness. The drive options to install on left out the Mini itself and showed only the two miniStacks. Then it wouldn't let me install on the primary drive, so I had to choose the supposed backup drive. Even then, there was no option to "archive and install."
After the Snow Leopard install was done, I couldn't find the Mini's hard drive in the Finder, so I've left it till tomorrow to continue.
I don't know if I've made some sense to you because I'm so tired and I know that I've left details out, but if you can get an idea about what I've done so far, I'd appreciate any tips you may have.
Now it's off to bed! :zzz: