Want to highlight a helpful answer? Upvote!

Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Permission repair been running for almost 2 days now? What happens if i stop it? What to do? Please help. Thanks in advance.

My imac wont start up after it asked me to restart the system. Prior to that, a message showed saying i dont have enough space on my start up disk. Now after i restart, it wont go pass the gray screen at start up with the apple logo. I restarted it several times, unplugged power from wall and still wont go pass the gray screen. I am now start up with the installation disk that came with imac and running permission repair( read it from other posts). Permission repair says 8 min till completion and its been running for 2 days now. What else can i do? What happens if i end permission repair and do repair disk? Will disk help solve my start up problem? Please help :( Thanks in advance...

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Sep 26, 2011 1:10 PM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Sep 26, 2011 3:13 PM

You shouldn't be running Permissions repair booted from the install disc, in the first place. Stop it, shut down and Safe Boot. Hold Shift key down at startup chime. Give it longer to boot than usual. If you can get it to boot up, you must delete some things to make room. Likely candidates are in your home folder, music, movies, documents, pictures. The Safe Boot will, if possible, repair your drive.


If you don't want to lose them completely, you need to move them to an external drive. You should maintain at least 15-20% free of drive capacity.


You will likely have introduced real errors by repairing Permissions booted from the install DVD. You can fix them by running Permissions repair if and when you are in Safe Boot.

11 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Sep 26, 2011 3:13 PM in response to Meruksai

You shouldn't be running Permissions repair booted from the install disc, in the first place. Stop it, shut down and Safe Boot. Hold Shift key down at startup chime. Give it longer to boot than usual. If you can get it to boot up, you must delete some things to make room. Likely candidates are in your home folder, music, movies, documents, pictures. The Safe Boot will, if possible, repair your drive.


If you don't want to lose them completely, you need to move them to an external drive. You should maintain at least 15-20% free of drive capacity.


You will likely have introduced real errors by repairing Permissions booted from the install DVD. You can fix them by running Permissions repair if and when you are in Safe Boot.

Sep 26, 2011 4:53 PM in response to WZZZ

WZZZ,

After i did what you said, i was able to get by the gray screen after 10 min or so. Then the blue screen came on for 5 secs only to be replaced by a black screen and the the comp shuts down. Now what or where did i go wrong? I held shift prior to the chime sound at start up and this is what happened. Please do u have any other suggestions or solution to this? Thanks again.

Sep 26, 2011 6:43 PM in response to Meruksai

Try again. This time hold Shift down at the startup chime, or as soon as the computer starts up, not prior to it. If this won't work you may find it necessary to reinstall Snow Leopard. However, if you were experiencing a kernel panic (a message in several languages) when you were asked to restart, that may mean a hardware problem (there can be causes due to software issues, as well.) In additon, if you were so low on free disk space, I'm at a loss to know what will happen now if you try to reinstall.


Anyway, give another Safe Boot a try.

Sep 26, 2011 7:34 PM in response to Meruksai

If you were able to get into Safe Boot -- a screen with "Safe Boot" in red letters would have appeared -- that should have repaired the drive. Next, just run Permissions repair, still in Safe Boot. (You can not repair the drive booted normally, that is, not booted from the install disc.) After running Permissions, you should free up some space on the drive, still booted in Safe Boot. Then see how things are working booted back normally.

Sep 26, 2011 7:54 PM in response to WZZZ

I don't have automatic login set, so if you do, you may not see that login screen with Safe Boot in red letters. In Snow Leopard, I think you should have seen a progress bar, though, briefly at the beginning, which I think says something like "loading Safe Boot." In any case, if you held down the Shift key at the startup chime, you would have made it to Safe Boot.

Sep 27, 2011 5:28 AM in response to Meruksai

I think it's time to stop Permissions repair -- looks like your system is completely out of whack -- and reinstall Snow Leopard. But before you do that you must make some space on the drive or reinstalling may not work. Boot back into Safe Boot to do this, if you can't get booted normally.


You are not erasing and installing. Boot from the install disc and just choose the option to install. This should give you new system files while preserving everything else. It would be better if you have a backup (preferably a full bootable clone on an external drive), but if you don't, you'll have to go ahead without one.

Sep 27, 2011 7:55 AM in response to WZZZ

Thank you much! I cant believe the amount of great information that i found on your recommendation for updating thread. Greatly appreciated here, and by everyone else whos facing the same problem im sure. Youve just rescued me from my frustrations and now my system is back :) i have a few things to reinstall and im back on my feet! Cheers

Permission repair been running for almost 2 days now? What happens if i stop it? What to do? Please help. Thanks in advance.

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.