How to fix error 35: Unable to determine UUID

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.

Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message that corresponds to an abnormal backup. Now

CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD

so that all messages are showning, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.

If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.

If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.

When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Third-party system modifications are a common cause of usability problems. By a “system modification,” I mean software that affects the operation of other software — potentially for the worse. The procedure will help identify which such modifications you've installed, as well as some other aspects of the configuration that may be related to the problem.

Don’t be alarmed by the seeming complexity of these instructions — they’re easy to carry out. Here's a brief summary: You copy a line of text from this web page into a window in another application. You wait about a minute. Then you paste some other text, which will have been copied automatically, back into a reply on this page. The sequence is copy; paste; paste again. That's all there is to it. Details follow.

You may have started the computer in "safe" mode. Preferably, these steps should be taken while booted in “normal” mode. If the system is now running in safe mode and is bootable in normal mode, reboot as usual. If it only boots in safe mode, use that.

Below are instructions to enter a UNIX shell command. It does nothing but produce human-readable output. However, you need to think carefully before running any program at the behest of a stranger on a public message board. If you question the safety of the procedure suggested here — which you should — search this site for other discussions in which it’s been followed without any report of ill effects. If you can't satisfy yourself that these instructions are safe, don't follow them.

If you have more than one user, and the one with the problem is not an administrator, please run the command both as that user and as an administrator. The results may be different. The administrator is the user that was created automatically when you booted the system for the first time. If you can't log in as an administrator, just run the command as the user who has the problem. Most personal Macs have only one user, and in that case this paragraph doesn’t apply.

Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it:

clear; PB=/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy; PR () { [[ "$o" ]] && o=$(sed 's/^/ /' <<< "$o") && printf '\n%s:\n\n%s\n' "$1" "$o"; }; PC () { o=$(grep [^[:blank:]] "$2"); PR "$1"; }; PF () { o=$($PB -c Print "$2" | awk -F'= ' \/$3'/{print $2}'); PR "$1"; }; PN () { [[ $o -eq 0 ]] || printf "\n%s: %s\n" "$1" $o; }; a=$(id | grep -w '80(admin)'); [[ "$a" ]] && sudo true && r=1 || r=; { [[ "$a" ]] || echo $'No admin access\n'; [[ "$a" && ! "$r" ]] && echo $'No root access\n'; system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType | sed '8!d;s/^ *//'; o=$(system_profiler SPDiagnosticsDataType | sed '5,6!d'); fgrep -q P <<< "$o" && o=; PR "POST"; o=$(($(vm_stat | awk '/Pageo/{sub("\\.",""); print $2}')/256)); o=$((o>=1024?o:0)); PN "Pageouts (MiB)"; s=( $(sar -u 1 10 | sed '$!d') ); [[ ${s[4]} -lt 90 ]] && o=$( printf 'User %s%%\t\tSystem %s%%' ${s[1]} ${s[3]} ) || o=; PR "Total CPU usage"; [[ "$o" ]] && o=$(ps acrx -o comm,ruid,%cpu | sed '2!d'); PR "Max %CPU by process (name, UID, %)"; o=$(kextstat -kl | grep -v com\\.apple | cut -c53- | cut -d\< -f1); PR "Loaded extrinsic kernel extensions"; o=$(launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple|org\.(x|openbsd)|\.[0-9]+$/{print $3}'); PR "Loaded extrinsic user agents"; o=$(launchctl getenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES); PR "Inserted libraries"; PC "cron configuration" /e*/cron*; o=$(crontab -l | grep [^[:blank:]]); PR "User cron tasks"; PC "Global launchd configuration" /e*/lau*; PC "Per-user launchd configuration" ~/.lau*; PF "Global login items" /L*/P*/loginw* Path; PF "Per-user login items" L*/P*/*loginit* Name; PF "Safari extensions" L*/Saf*/*/E*.plist Bundle | sed 's/\..*$//;s/-[1-9]$//'; o=$(find ~ $TMPDIR.. \( -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 \) | wc -l); PN "Restricted user files"; cd; o=$(find -L /S*/L*/E* {,/}L*/{A*d,Compon,Ex,In,Keyb,Mail/Bu,P*P,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo}* -type d -name Contents -prune | while read d; do ID=$($PB -c 'Print :CFBundleIdentifier' "$d/Info.plist") || ID=; ID=${ID:-No bundle ID}; egrep -qv "^com\.apple\.[^x]|Accusys|ArcMSR|ATTO|HDPro|HighPoint|driver\.stex|hp-fax|JMicron|microsoft\.MDI|print|SoftRAID" <<< $ID && printf '%s\n\t(%s)\n' "${d%/Contents}" "$ID"; done); PR "Extrinsic loadable bundles"; o=$(find /u*/{,*/}lib -type f -exec sh -c 'file -b "$1" | grep -qw shared && ! codesign -v "$1"' {} {} \; -print); PR "Unsigned shared libraries"; o=$(system_profiler SPFontsDataType | egrep "Valid: N|Duplicate: Y" | wc -l); PN "Font problems"; for d in {,/}L*/{La,Priv,Sta}*; do o=$(ls -A "$d"); PR "$d"; done; [ "$r" ] && { o=$(sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.(apple|openssh|vix\.cron)|org\.(amav|apac|calendarse|cups|dove|isc|ntp|post[fg]|x)/{print $3}'); PR "Loaded extrinsic daemons"; o=$(sudo defaults read com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook); PR "Login hook"; o=$(sudo crontab -l | grep [^[:blank:]]); PR "Root cron tasks"; }; o=$(syslog -k Sender kernel -k Message CReq 'GPU |hfs: Ru|I/O e|find tok|n Cause: -|NVDA\(|pagin|timed? ?o' | tail -n25 | awk '/:/{$4=""; print}'); PR "Log check"; } 2> /dev/null | pbcopy; exit

The command may take up to a few minutes to run, depending on how many files you have and the speed of the computer.

Please note:

☞ This procedure is all copy-and-paste — type only your login password when prompted. When typing it, make sure caps lock is off.

☞ When you type your password, you won't see what you're typing.

☞ Remember to post the output. It's already in the Clipboard when you see the line "[Process completed]" in the Terminal window.

☞ If any personal information, such as your name or email address, appears in the output, anonymize it before posting. Usually that won't be necessary.

Is there a way to see the IOKit messages to see why it is "timing out waiting for IOKit to be quiet"?

Where did you see that?

Please test after taking each of the following steps.

Step 1

Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed to boot, and remove anything that's inserted in the card-reader slot, if your model has one, including an empty adapter.

Step 2

Reset the System Management Controller.

Step 3

Step 3

Boot in safe mode. This will cause certain caches maintained by the system to be rebuilt.

I think you have a corrupt partition table. That will require making at least two complete backups of all data on the drive, including Windows data, then booting into Internet Recovery (command-option-R at the startup chime) to repartition the drive with the default options — one data partition. After that, restore your OS X data from a backup, reboot, and recreate the Boot Camp partition. Use only Boot Camp Assistant for that purpose. Never make any changes to the partition structure in Windows.

One backup is not enough to be safe.