What does "no mountable file systems" mean?

Question

What does "no mountable file systems" mean?

Hello. My poor iMac G4's hard drive was recently fried during a power outage. Thankfully, this happened 10 days before my 3 yr. Apple Care Protection Plan expired, (and my middle name's Murphy)! The Apple store genius was able to retrieve much of the data from my fried drive and transfer it to the new one. My OS is now 10.3.7 (from previous 10.2.8). My problem is that I can't seem to download anything successfully. For example: I went online and tried to download a game called SolitairePlus, and it seemed to be downloading, but afterwards I got a warning window stating "the following disk images failed to mount" Image: Solitaire Plus.dmg Reason: no mountable file systems.
Can anyone tell me what this means, and how I can correct the problem, and could you put it in words as if you were explaining it to a 4 yr. old? Thanks very much in advance.

P.S. I also don't seem to be having any success entering my old password for certain things. How do I set up a new one? It still recognizes the name I gave the computer 3 yrs. ago, but not the password.

P.S.S. Oh gosh, I hope I'm not wearing out my question asking welcome here, but I also can't find Classic in this new system anywhere. Would it be a bad idea to try and put it back?

Posted on Oct 31, 2005 9:25 AM

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Answer 1

tm311

Level 6

10,350 points

Oct 31, 2005 10:37 AM in response to Ellen Formicola

Sounds like you have "suspect" install of the OS. Did they give you any dfisks to re-install Panther? (10.3.7 is Panther)

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Answer 2

Oct 31, 2005 11:22 AM in response to tm311

No disks. Hubby picked it up yesterday. They just gave him the computer, nothing else. I thought about that, and how it might be a problem if I ever need to reinstall. Should we go back to the Apple store?

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Answer 3

Patrick_C

Level 4

1,605 points

Oct 31, 2005 12:36 PM in response to Ellen Formicola

Ellen -

I just did a search for "no mountable file systems" in Panther Support, it only came up with one document (a PDF) on DVD Studio Pro, in that document I found the following text:

"If you format a disk image using the Blue Laser Disc Media setting, you will not be able to mount the disk image on computers using Mac OS X v10.3 Panther. A warning appears with no mountable file systems as the reason for the mounting failure. This is due to blue laser disk images using the UDF 2.5 format, which is not supported with Panther. UDF 2.5 is supported by Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger."

This makes me wonder if the issue might be due to a combination, the download and your OS, have you tried downloading any other items where the disk image(s) did open successfully?

Patrick

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Answer 4

tm311

Level 6

10,350 points

Oct 31, 2005 2:00 PM in response to Ellen Formicola

Do you have a phone number to call them?

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Answer 5

Nov 1, 2005 9:53 AM in response to Patrick_C

I am not having any luck downloading anything so far. Thanks for the info you found regarding this. I will contact the Apple store and relay this to them. Aother question, will Tiger run on this computer? It's 3 yrs. old. And if so, do you think that would solve the download problems? Maybe it would make more sense to just bypass the Panther thing. I sort of wish I could just go back to good old 10.2.8, but they kept all my disks!

Thanks,
Ellen

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Answer 6

Patrick_C

Level 4

1,605 points

Nov 1, 2005 10:37 AM in response to Ellen Formicola

Ellen -

Whatever you do, I think you need to get some install disks so you'll be able to re-install if it ever becomes necessary. I prefer Panther over Tiger but I don't have personal experience with Panther and your machine.

From the information I have seen, Tiger will install on your machine, unless you particularly want Tiger, I'm not so sure you couldn't get Panther to work. Because I believe in "if ain't broke don't fix it", I'm still running Panther on my iBook & G5.

If you had your important data backed up AND had some install disks, I'd consider re-installing 10.3.7 or updating to 10.3.9. If the Applestore is convenient, I'd talk with them, they may be able to get you straight and end up keeping Panther.

While it probably isn't it, have you done the typical, repair permissions, run the cron jobs, etc.?

Patrick

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Answer 7

tm311

Level 6

10,350 points

Nov 1, 2005 12:22 PM in response to Ellen Formicola

Those disks belong to you...get t hem back and we will help you reload 10.2 if that is what you want to do. You can also run tiger with NO problems on that computer...

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Answer 8

Nov 1, 2005 4:08 PM in response to tm311

Going to pick them up on Friday. I can't think of anything I was missing out on with 10.2.8 (is that Jaguar?), but if Tiger will allow me to download without that error message, then I think I might want to go with it. BTW, does Classic come with Tiger? Thanks for your help.

Ellen

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Answer 9

tm311

Level 6

10,350 points

Nov 1, 2005 6:18 PM in response to Ellen Formicola

Tiger does support "classic", but it does not install it. You will need to select "install os9 drivers" during the install if you are wiping your drive, and then install a os9 system folder from an os9 install disk. If you do not install the os8 drivers during any osX install you can not install os9 ( ie: classic).

http://www.apple.com/support/tiger/classic/

I do believe tiger is the last OS that will support "classic".

And yes 10.2.x is jaguar 10.3.x is panther and 10.4.x is tiger

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Answer 10

Nov 1, 2005 8:27 PM in response to Patrick_C

Patrick,
Would I need to repair permissions this soon? Just got it back on Sunday. Also, sorry, but what is cron jobs? Remember you are talking to someone who doesn't know ram from rom.

Thanks,
Ellen

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Answer 11

Patrick_C

Level 4

1,605 points

Nov 1, 2005 10:07 PM in response to Ellen Formicola

" Would I need to repair permissions this soon? Just got it back on Sunday. Also, sorry, but what is cron jobs? Remember you are talking to someone who doesn't know ram from rom."

Probably not, I'd like to think they did that for you and it wouldn't be necessary, but it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. The cron jobs are background tasks that are run in the early morning hours if the computer is on and not sleeping.

Information on the cron jobs can be found here.

Since you're having issues downloading, it won't do us much good if I tell you to go download Onyx, or MacJanitor, these programs will run the cron jobs manually for you (and they do other cleaning & maintenance).

We can however run the crons from Terminal, login as an administrator and open up Terminal (MacHD/Applications/Utilities/Terminal), at the link I posted above, at the bottom you'll see the directions to run the cron jobs, one at a time, you'll run:

periodic daily, periodic weekly, and periodic monthly

sudo periodic daily <return>
enter the admin PW <return>

When it finishes you can run the 'weekly' and then the 'monthly'

While I suspect this won't be the solution it wouldn't hurt to give it a try.

Patrick

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Answer 12

Patrick_C

Level 4

1,605 points

Nov 1, 2005 10:12 PM in response to Patrick_C

"I prefer Panther over Tiger"

That was a typo, I meant to say that I prefer Panther over Jaguar.

Patrick

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