Time Machine Star Wars Gets Stuck

Hello Pondini,

That "Ponzi" in my prior post was in reference to you, my apologies for a memory lapse.

Yes I know, but back when I did it, Apple did not consider it unsupported. In fact, we spoke about it when Apple was looking the other way about it. I had an Airport Extreme at the time and I didn't want to toss it and buy a Time Capsule. Just bad timing on my part.

But, that's not my problem. Somehow my TM installation is hosed.

I say it isn't the problem because I can access the TM backups from another machine, and I can't access that machine's TM backups from this machine.

Since the problem, I've partitioned the Air Disk and created a new backup. I've also installed the 10.6.8 cumulative update, updated permissions, and repaired the disk. None of this made a change. Then I tried to install from my Snow Leopard disk, which informs me it can't install because OS X can't boot from the internal drive, which doesn't make any sense. I've also done everything in the Star Wars section of your post.

The symptom is when I click Time Machine in the dock. The disk mounts, and if I have all Finder windows closed, the TM window pops up, but then that's it. No Star Wars display. The window acts like the front window of TM when the Star Wars display is up, I can right click on a file and I get "Delete all Backups of This File", and clicking elsewhere outside of the window is dead. So it is very much like TM is running but without the Star Wars display, without the Cancel Restore at the bottom, and without the Timeline on the right, and of course without the parade of windows off into the black hole.

If I click the red box and close the window, the Cancel Restore appears at the bottom of the screen for a few seconds, and TM exits.

Here is something potentially interesting in the Console (I X'd out my machine name):

7/28/12 3:27:21 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.netauth.sysagent[289]) Exited with exit code: 255

7/28/12 3:30:11 PM Finder[216] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowType: Invalid (NULL) window

7/28/12 3:30:11 PM Finder[216] kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.

7/28/12 3:30:11 PM Finder[216] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowType: Invalid (NULL) window

7/28/12 3:30:11 PM com.apple.Finder[216] Sat Jul 28 15:30:11 XXX-iMac.local Finder[216] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowType: Invalid (NULL) window

7/28/12 3:30:11 PM com.apple.Finder[216] Sat Jul 28 15:30:11 XXX-iMac.local Finder[216] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.

7/28/12 3:30:11 PM com.apple.Finder[216] Sat Jul 28 15:30:11 XXX-iMac.local Finder[216] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowType: Invalid (NULL) window

I can look at the backup manually from either machine (the problem machine is an old iMac, the other is a MackBook Pro.

Kind of stumped.

Oh, I also can't get the Star Wars display if I connect the USB drive directly to my iMac, so I am pretty sure it isn't the backup itself.

You need to repair both the disk and the sparse bundle containing the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

I was more thorough than that:

(1) mounted USB drive directly to my MBP.

(2) deleted the sparse bundle for the iMac (left the one for the MBP there).

(3) partitioned the drive.

(5) repaired the drive.

No errors doing this.

Are you sure that's either the disc that came with that Mac, or a Retail disc that's not older than the one the Mac came with?

I have the disk that came with my iMac, but I didn't use it because it's not Snow Leapard. I used the retail family pack Snow Leopard disk I purchased. That is also the way I repaired the internal disk (no errors) and repaired permissions.

Have you verified your internal HD? Yes, no errors.

If so, are you sure your internal HD has the GUID partition map scheme? It's Mac OS Extended Journaled and I've never reformatted it or partitioned it.

I assume you mean #E4? Yes.

If you want to see backups for the other Mac, you need to use the Browse... option. Yes, that is what I did.

Three screenshots. It seems the combo buttons don't work (I hear the sound but no file/clipboard) and so these were taken with my iPhone.

#1 When TM is "running" and I right click on a file. The background is just my wallpaper. Sorry for the low quality...

#1 When I close the window above, lower left corner:

#3 ...and the right corner:

That bar goes right across the screen just like it normally does. It says "Now" in the middle.

I don't use the Mail and Address Book applications, I use Gmail and Google Calendar.

OK, I used Address Book as you requested, and the behavior is exactly the same. "Nothing" happens except TM is actually running, and when I click Close I get "Cancel.... Today (Now).... Restore" on the bottom of the screen for a second or two.

Another oddness... Preview will not display a jpg, it just shows it as white, but if I Print from Preview, the preview shows the image. Don't know if it is related.

You still need to repair the sparse bundle. No, because I completely deleted the sparse bundle and did a full TM backup to the new partition. In the process of testing this I deleted THAT sparse bundle and I'm about a third of the way through another full backup. And I have a CCC backup safely hidden away.

I've had display anomalies in the past. I'm going to see if I can figure out why I can't reinstall Snow Leopard and see if that fixes it. I'll let you know. Thanks for your help to this point.

OK, I located and applied the trick of using Disk Utility to make the partition on my internal hard drive slightly smaller (1G) which ended up not changing the size BUT the Snow Leopard install disc is now willing to install on it.

Before I do, aside from having a CCC of the drive, should I be able to perform this install from the DVD and then apply the 10.6.8 combined update, that's it? Do I need to remember any settings or will all of that be preserved?

Well, what a long, sad, strange trip it's been.

This old girl (iMac4,1) isn't feeling well, but for the time being she's OK looking out the window. The re-install of Show Leopard failed, twice, and I know why; it's the graphics card issue. It's all coming back to me; I have smcFanControl installed and I have ATIRadeonX1000.kext disabled and with that I can use it for basic tasks. But the install DVD is too much work for it.

Yeah, it's not good that the install failed, but I ran the combined upgrade after that, and I am typing this on her. She's been relegated to if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I have the CCC prior to this mess on an external hard drive, and I've disabled TM, gone back to one partition, and run CCC on a sparsebundle on the AirDisk, which works fine. If and when I get a replacement I'll just access the data from the AirDisk.

So, long story short, I think the TM problems are a graphics card problem.

I have to add that this iMac has been a disappointment. It really hasn't had a hard life, and it's failing. You can find stories all over the web about this issue.

Regardless, Pondini, as always, thanks for your help.

Yep. It's odd that Preview can't display a jpg but GraphicConverter can.

Still, she's in hospice now. Just keeping her comfortable. No more surprises.

CCC on (the right) AirDisk sparsebundle is actually a worthy consideration. A lot less complexity, and I've never accidentally deleted a file and had to recover with TM anyway. Disks are big enough these days to where you never have to delete anything; well, hardly ever. In some ways TM is a great solution to an old problem; just get a 1T internal drive and clone it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm impressed with TM and it is quite the technical achievement. But it is pervasive and complex, which works against reliability.