So many thanks for taking the trouble to reply.
Basically these are the details:
1. Using a 15inch MacBook Pro late 2008 with OSX 10.8.4
2. Capacity 319GB ans available 116GB
3. While verifying the Mackintosh HD via the Disk Utility the process stops.. saying that the Volume bitmap needs minor repair for orphaned blocks. It is corrupted and needs to be repaired.
ERROR: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery....n the OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.
4. I therefore shut down and reopen with CMD+R to get to the OSX Utilities.
5. When that appears on screen there are 4 options available i.e. Restore from TM, Reinstall OS, Get Help online & finally Disk Utility.
6. I select the last one and click to continue. At this point the operation stops i.e. I cannot get beyond clicking on the 4th.Option.
End Result: Cannot use the Disk Utility to make a repair.
Hope that clearly states the problem.
Many thanks,
bernphys