Keys out of order error message?

A 'Keys out of order' error indicates serious problems with your file directories. You may be able to fix the 'keys out of order' by running fsck in single user mode. Boot your machine holding down the Command+S keys immediately after the startup chime. At the command line prompt, type:

/sbin/fsck -fy

(note that there is a space between the k and -fy)

and press the Return key. After the system runs a file system check and attempts repairs, you will see one of two messages, 'The volume ( nameof volume) appears to be OK' or, more likely a message telling you (among other things, 'FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED.'

If you do not see the first message, run fsck again as many times as necessary, until you do. If you don't see that message after running fsck six or seven times, then you might try using Disk Warrior again. If Disk Warrior cannot fix the problem, then it is likely you will need to erase (writing zeros) and reformat your drive and reinstall your OS.

Read more about fsck, here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

Good luck!

Tuttle



1676/8374

Happy New Year Tuttle and ROdan,

This is an interesting problem, unless of course it is happening to oneself!

FWIW, there has apparently been success with a G5 booting in OS 9 without extensions. See:

This got me thinking. If the machine is already on, and the OS tries to mount the disk, but the disk driver is damaged, well, bad things happen. Also when he writes, “When the drive spins up, the system loads the drivers from the device, and then executes it.” Really got me thinking. So obviously I cannot have the OS load the driver. But how do you make the Mac NOT load the driver? And more, even if you could, would the Mac even “see” the drive and mount it?
In OS 7, 8, and 9, a common work around to get your Mac to boot when it was having problems was to hold down the Shift key to turn off extensions. Most problems in OS 9 and earlier were caused by extensions, so it was a very handy tool to use when troubleshooting problems on your Mac. But there is no equivalent in OS X that I am aware of. So what to do?
Step Five: OS 9 with no extensions.
I remembered from my IT days that if I booted Mac OS 9 without extensions on, any attached FireWire drive would also appear on the desktop. So I shut down the G4 running OS 9.1, fired up the G5 in Target mode, waited for it to get up and running, and restarted the G4 9.1 machine with extensions off.
Victory! There was the bad drive, as well as the good one, in the G5 mounted on the G4’s desktop!
Step Six: Copy! Copy! Copy!
Before I did anything else, I quickly copied all the files I was missing since my last backup. Unfortunately, that also meant copying around 40GB of music files. So late Saturday night, I started the copying, and by Sunday morning, all my files were now safely on the good G5 250GB hard drive.
Step Seven: Repair Time!
The first thing I did was run the OS 9 version of Disk Tools on the bad drive. As expected, it could not fix the problem. But I had, prior to connecting the G5 the first time around, installed the OS 9 version of Alsoft’s Disk Warrior on the G4.
I ran Disk Warrior on the bad drive. It took a LONG time. What Disk Warrior does is builds a new directory on a drive, which I was hoping would cure my problems. After three hours, Disk Warrior was done. It found a BUNCH of problems. To be on the safe side, I ran it again. This time it took only a little more than an hour, and did not find any more trouble.
Shutting everything down, I rebooted the G5. I held down the Option key so that I could tell the G5 which drive to start from. It only saw the new drive as a viable boot disk. Oh-oh...
I held down Command-S to bring up UNIX after the next boot, and ran FSCK-F on the bad drive. It worked, fixing a few thousand items. Yikes! What did Disk Warrior do? I ran it again, and it repaired some more. Three times, and it was done.
Restart.
Welcome to Macintosh!
And all was well in the world.
A few things to take away from this:
Not all problems are as bad as they seem. There are usually always solutions to your computer problem. Some involved thinking way outside the box. How many people would have figured that Mac OS 9.1 with extensions off would be the solution to this Keys out of Order problem? Certainly not I.
In most cases, Disk Warrior would have fixed this problem without all the run around I had to do. If you don’t already own it, you may want to go pick up a copy. It’s well worth the small investment.
FSCK is not always going to repair or fix your problems. So be sure to back-up your data often.
Having two hard drives is WAY better than having only one. If you have an iMac or Portable in which you cannot cram in another drive, look at external Firewire hard drives.
It is also helpful to have another Mac laying around for the Target Mode trick. Can’t afford one? I see them on eBay all the time, REALLY cheap!
Hope this article helps someone else out there if you ever run into a similar problem

The full link is:
http://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=1817

Joe

Do let it run. I've heard of DW taking up to two days to fix directories, so if you're patient, it may work out.

Good luck!

(And thanks, Joe!)

Tuttle

I've heard of DW taking up to two days to fix directories, so if you're patient, it may work out.

I remember one poster a few years back letting Disk Warrior run for 14 days. It did fix the disk though.

Grant

I remember one poster a few years back letting Disk Warrior run for 14 days. It did fix the disk though.

Two weeks, that's nothin'. Why I remember a guy back in the old OS 9 days who let Disk Warrior run for two years before it fixed his directory structure....

Tuttle

LOL!

Well one option would be to find another Mac and boot your trouble powerbook up into Firewire Target Disk Mode(hold down the T key while booting up) and connect it to the working Mac. Download the 10.4.3 combo installer onto the working mac and install it onto your powerbook. You will then need to reboot your powerbook with your Install disc and run Disk Utility's Repair Permission routine. After that, try to boot your powerbook normally.

Grant