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Q: Running Hardware Test from second Mac?

My wife has a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac. It has a faulty DVD drive - actually a disc has been stuck in there for some time and we haven't been able to get it out. That is not our current issue, although it makes troubleshooting much harder.


Her iMac is getting slower and slower and I promised I'd run some tests. I can't run the Hardware Test on that machine from the original install disc because of the faulty DVD drive. I'd like to run the test remotely from my MacBook Pro but can't work out how to do that. I have tried booting her Mac in Target mode where I can run Disk Utility on my machine and repair her hard drive but when I insert her original Install Disc in my laptop there is no Hardware Test visible on it. I have tried to get access to my DVD drive from her iMac but 'DVD or CD Sharing' being turned on in 'Sharing Prefs' on my machine doesn't seem to bring up any shared discs on her computer. Maybe it's still trying to access her faulty DVD drive?

 

Is there anything I can do here to run some hardware tests on her machine? I'd like to do that before I start doing clean installs of the Mac OS on hard drives etc. I'm a bit stuck.

 

Thank you

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), 16GB RAM 1TB SSD

Posted on Sep 23, 2014 12:56 PM

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Q: Running Hardware Test from second Mac?

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  • by Kappy,

    Kappy Kappy Sep 23, 2014 12:59 PM in response to insch
    Level 10 (271,406 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 23, 2014 12:59 PM in response to insch

    Five ways to eject a stuck CD or DVD from the optical drive

     

    Ejecting the stuck disc can usually be done in one of the following ways:

     

      1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the

          left mouse button until the disc ejects.

     

      2. Press the Eject button on your keyboard.

     

      3. Click on the Eject button in the menubar.

     

      4. Press COMMAND-E.

     

      5. If none of the above work try this: Open the Terminal application in

          your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following:

     

            /usr/bin/drutil eject

     

    If this fails then try this:

     

    Boot the computer into Single-user Mode. At the prompt enter the same command as used above. To restart the computer enter "reboot" at the prompt without quotes.

     

    Running the AHT doesn't make much sense for fixing slowness. If the computer is working, then there is no hardware failure. See the following:

     

    Things You Can Do To Resolve Slow Downs

     

    If your computer seems to be running slower here are some things you can do:

     

    Start with visits to:     OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney;

                                      The X Lab: The X-FAQs;

                                      The Safe Mac » Mac Performance Guide;

                                      The Safe Mac » The myth of the dirty Mac;

                                      Mac maintenance Quick Assist.

     

    Boot into Safe Mode then repair your hard drive and permissions:

     

    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions Pre-Lion

     

    Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.

     

    Repair the Hard Drive - Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks

     

    Boot to the Recovery HD:

     

    Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilites Menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD disk icon and click on the arrow button below.

     

    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.

     

    Restart your computer normally and see if this has helped any. Next do some maintenance:

     

    For situations Disk Utility cannot handle the best third-party utility is Disk Warrior;  DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible.

     

    Note: Alsoft ships DW on a bootable DVD that will startup Macs running Snow Leopard or earlier. It cannot start Macs that came with Lion or later pre-installed, however, DW will work on those models.

     

    Suggestions for OS X Maintenance

     

    OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep.  Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced since Tiger.  These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or later and should not be installed.

     

    OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive.

     

    Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection

     

    An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.

    Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.

    See these Apple articles:

     

      Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection

      OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware

      OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware

      About file quarantine in OS X

     

    If you require anti-virus protection I recommend using VirusBarrier Express 1.1.6 or Dr.Web Light both from the App Store. They're both free, and since they're from the App Store, they won't destabilize the system. (Thank you to Thomas Reed for these recommendations.)

     

    Troubleshooting Applications

     

    I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX, Mavericks Cache Cleaner, or Cocktail that you can use for removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache, log, or temporary files can cause application or OS X crashes as well as kernel panics.

     

    If you have Snow Leopard or Leopard, then for similar repairs install the freeware utility Applejack.  If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line.  Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. Applejack does not work with Lion and later.

     

    Basic Backup

     

    For some people Time Machine will be more than adequate. Time Machine is part of OS X. There are two components:

     

    1. A Time Machine preferences panel as part of System Preferences;

    2. A Time Machine application located in the Applications folder. It is

        used to manage backups and to restore backups. Time Machine

        requires a backup drive that is at least twice the capacity of the

        drive being backed up.

     

    Alternatively, get an external drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):

     

      1. Carbon Copy Cloner

      2. Get Backup

      3. Deja Vu

      4. SuperDuper!

      5. Synk Pro

      6. Tri-Backup

     

    Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore.  Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files. For help with using Time Machine visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.

     

    Referenced software can be found at MacUpdate.

     

    Additional Hints

     

    Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity as free space.

     

    Add more RAM. If your computer has less than 2 GBs of RAM and you are using OS X Leopard or later, then you can do with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion work much better with 4 GBs of RAM than their system minimums. The more concurrent applications you tend to use the more RAM you should have.

     

    Always maintain at least 15 GBs or 10% of your hard drive's capacity as free space, whichever is greater. OS X is frequently accessing your hard drive, so providing adequate free space will keep things from slowing down.

     

    Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:

     

    Pre-Mavericks

     

    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu.  Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.

     

    Mavericks and later

     

    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the View menu.  Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.

     

    Often this problem occurs because of a corrupted cache or preferences file or an attempt to write to a corrupted log file.

  • by Chris CA,

    Chris CA Chris CA Sep 23, 2014 1:03 PM in response to insch
    Level 9 (79,604 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 23, 2014 1:03 PM in response to insch

    Whic OS is she running on her machine?

    insch wrote:

    My wife has a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac. It has a faulty DVD drive - actually a disc has been stuck in there for some time and we haven't been able to get it out.

    Try this -.>How to eject your disc?

     

    -> DVD or CD sharing: Using Remote Disc

  • by insch,

    insch insch Sep 23, 2014 1:18 PM in response to Kappy
    Level 1 (38 points)
    Audio
    Sep 23, 2014 1:18 PM in response to Kappy

    Thanks Kappy

     

    We did try everything to get the disc out some time ago - well and truly stuck. Re. hardware tests - I just wanted to be sure that RAM was ok. I think I'll do a clean install and use Migration Assistant to bring back things selectively rather than taking everything off TimeMachine.

     

    I will have a look at Activity Monitor too.

     

    P

  • by Kappy,

    Kappy Kappy Sep 23, 2014 1:20 PM in response to insch
    Level 10 (271,406 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 23, 2014 1:20 PM in response to insch

    Firstly, if the computer boots OK, then the RAM is fine. Secondly, Migration Assistant is not a proper tool for selectively restoring data. Better to use the Time Machine application for that.

  • by insch,

    insch insch Sep 23, 2014 1:34 PM in response to Chris CA
    Level 1 (38 points)
    Audio
    Sep 23, 2014 1:34 PM in response to Chris CA

    Thanks Chris

     

    She is using 10.9.2.

     

    I saw on the link you supplied for using a remote DVD drive that 'Remote Disc' won't show up under Devices if the machine has an optical drive. Obviously this iMac does svn though it's faulty - so does that bring me to a grinding halt?

     

    I know that RAM may be the wrong direction but I had a faulty RAM slot on my Mac Pro and it booted fine and was generally stable - got very slow though. Could be a dying hard drive on the iMac or maybe just full of stuff which needs tidying up. Will do more work. But can't see how to run the Hardware Test which I'd like to do to rule things out.

     

    Thanks.