Repair Permissions hangs

Question

Repair Permissions hangs

Very frustrating...

1. Boot to orig 10.5 DVD-ROM, run Disk Utility from startup screen

2. Repair Disk: works fine on 3 different disk volumes. No errors anywhere.

3. Repair Permissions on main Leopard 10.5.8 disk; Hangs (Show details TRUE)

4. Repair Permissions on old 10.4.11 volume; slow but works, took about 40 mins to run to end

5. Repair Permissions on backup 10.4.11 disk from over a year ago; also slow but works

Only Repair Permissions for main 10.5.8 (fully updated) system volume hangs.

Any ideas?

thanks

G5 dual 2GHz, 4.5GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.8), iPhone 4, Dell PC XP ( London, UK )

Posted on May 13, 2011 9:14 AM

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Answer 1

May 13, 2011 9:54 AM in response to William Donelson

Two thoughts.

1. Have you tried Repair Disk first from the Install DVD? Maybe there are some directory problems there.

2. I'm not sure you should have Repaired Permissions on your 10.4.11 backups using the 10.5 disk - I'm sure I heard that Tiger and Leopard use different methodologies for this?

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Answer 2

May 13, 2011 10:57 AM in response to christopher rigby1

1. See #1 in the original post, please.

2. Yes, but "Repair Permissions" of 10.4.11 from 10.5 orig install disc was allowed, so I tried it.

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Answer 3

May 14, 2011 3:04 AM in response to William Donelson

Has no one else ever seen this problem?

Surely someone else can offer some help on this?

Please.

thanks

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Answer 4

Jul 18, 2011 3:02 AM in response to William Donelson

You are not alone WD.

I have been hunting for an explanation for my macbook running so slow (especially Safari) and have ended up fixing disk errors (successfully) but getting a hang when I "Repair Permissions". I am booting off my 10.6 installation disk and using the disk utility application. I get 1 minute into the permissions repair and no further. The disk takes on a cyclical rhythm and the screen becomes unresponsive.

Like you I would appreciate some suggestions about what to try next. Anyone?

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Answer 5

Jul 18, 2011 2:02 PM in response to William Donelson

I think I found the solution:

When fixing disk errors the "Repair Disk" operation MAY advise you to use the Disk Utility of the original installation disk. No problem here, just organise the system to boot off of the installation disk and use the "Disk utility" menu option available in the first part of the installation phase. Use the Repair Disk option to repair the disk.

It seems obvious (BUT IS WRONG) that such a time is a good time to also run the Permissions Repair. Running Permissions Repair using the installation version of Disk Utility may cause the system to hang.

Instead, reboot the machine into its usual booting mode and run the currently installed version of Disk Utility. Performing a "Repair Permissions" with this 'latest' version succeeded for me and I hope it will succeed for you too.

Good luck.

Safari seems to be running faster, but it is too early to say for certain that I have fixed my slow running issues.

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Answer 6

Jul 18, 2011 2:21 PM in response to nickAppleCore

nickAppleCore wrote:

It seems obvious (BUT IS WRONG) that such a time is a good time to also run the Permissions Repair. Running Permissions Repair using the installation version of Disk Utility may cause the system to hang.

Instead, reboot the machine into its usual booting mode and run the currently installed version of Disk Utility. Performing a "Repair Permissions" with this 'latest' version succeeded for me and I hope it will succeed for you too.

If the original Install disk is for Tiger and Leopard has been installed later, then this is the ONLY way - the two OS's use a different method to do Disk Permission repairs so it must not be done from the original Install disk.

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