Issue with G4 MDD - on boot getting a "need to restart" message

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Issue with G4 MDD - on boot getting a "need to restart" message

I am hoping someone might have some insight on this issue. I have a G4 MDD dual boot, 1.25GHz, OS 10.4.11 and 10.5.8 (along with 9.2.2). I recently started the Mac up. It went through grey screen, blue screen and to my desktop. When I tried to open an app I immediately got a "You need to restart your computer" message. Tried restarting a couple of times as this has worked okay in the past. Not this time.

I next started in SUM so I could run Applejack. I ran Applejack in "AUTO" mode which does what is described as a "deep clean". All 5 steps went well with some minor repairs with the exception of one of the steps (I don't remember if it was the 3rd or 4th step). During this step it tried to access Disk4X10 - I do not remember the exact id. It took several tries before Applejack was able to do so, but was eventually able to complete the rest of the steps. I assumed the problem drive was an older SCSI drive that I only use for recovery purposes on rare occasions so I was not concerned. I exited AJ and restarted from my 10.4.11 HD. I got the same result with the restart message.

I next booted from my Drive Genius disc. I ran a repair on my boot drive and DG said it appeared okay. While I had DG running I decided to clone the boot drive to an external USB HD I have. I assumed since the boot drive icon was 1) showing up on the desktop, 2) I was able to get all the way to my desktop on startup and 3) DG could "see" the drive to run diagnostics - that I could clone the drive. The boot drive is a 75 MB and the cloning process took a little over 2 hours which seemed reasonable. I am also assuming I can reverse clone my boot drive from this clone to a new HD and everything "should" be back to normal. I realize that is assuming the cloning process had zero errors.

Since I had an older backup of my boot drive on another HD inside the Mac I tried to boot from it today. I got the same result as when I tried from the main boot drive. I also have 10.5 on 3rd internal drive and am able to boot from that without issue. When I looked at the 10.4 boot drive from that boot most everything is there - all apps and everything in the "Documents" folder - with the exception of when I look at the folders in myname where all but 3 show nothing in them. I backed up all of my most important stuff - financial stuff, etc. - on two different drives. These were in a folder I had named "Appleworks Documents". I cannot find this anywhere as of yet. I zapped the PRAM today and ran Disc Utilities, both verify and repair - which fixed several issues. I do not loose settings - clock etc. - so I am confident the battery is okay. I do not remember the last time I changed it, but it could be as long ago as 3 or 4 years.

My main question is why am I not seemingly able to move past the desktop when booting into 10.4.11? Is it due to the fact it's a "dual boot" machine? (I did do a "rebuild" with DG but it could not finish the job due to issues it found. (I'm assuming the dual boot thing is responsible.) What steps can I take to rectify the issue? Thanks for any help or insight anyone can offer.

G4 MDD, Mac OS X (10.4.11), M-Audio Delta 44, A1038 Display

Posted on Jun 30, 2015 8:47 PM

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Answer 1

Allan Jones

Level 9

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Jul 1, 2015 6:57 AM in response to THX1136

I'm getting you moved to the PowerMac forums. "Older Hardware" means pre-1998 Apple stuff.

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Answer 2

THX1136 Author

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Jul 1, 2015 6:58 AM in response to Allan Jones

Thank you Allan. I wasn't sure on where to post. I appreciate your help!

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 1, 2015 10:13 AM in response to THX1136

Offhand I'd say the dual boot has nothing to do with it.

I do not loose settings - clock etc. - so I am confident the battery is okay.

Note, if DAte/Time pref is set to automatically & you have an internet connection, Date & Time will be corrected before you ever see it.

Though your info is quite good,there isn't all that much to go on, except it appears to be HDD corruption & the backup was after the corruption, repairing the Disk is good, but will not repair damaged files, just repairs the Directory.

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Answer 4

THX1136 Author

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Jul 1, 2015 5:48 PM in response to BDAqua

To be sure I understand, Drive Genius is just repairing the directory and will not repair damaged files also? I am baffled by the fact that it appears all of the apps - like Photoshop, Pro Tools, Appleworks, etc. - are fine and documents are not there anymore. Also, my clone of the boot drive will be in the same condition correct? Do you know of any utility that can do the job of repairing damaged files?

I'm going into a very busy weekend and will not be able to fully work on getting things corrected. Thanks for your reply, BD!

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 1, 2015 6:47 PM in response to THX1136

Depends what kind of files, but most cannot be repaired, only replaced with good ones.

Correct, DG just fixes where they are on the Disk & how big they are, can't touch the contents of those files.

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Answer 6

THX1136 Author

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Jul 5, 2015 8:09 PM in response to BDAqua

@BD - Back after the long weekend with a question or two. I was wondering if you could explain the whys connected with the fact that I cannot boot into 10.4.11 from either my current boot drive or the back up I made a few years back? It doesn't make sense to me so I figure I'm not understanding something correctly. I get that I would not be able to boot from the clone I just made of my current boot drive, but I don't get why I can't boot from the older clone I made.

FYI, I also forgot I had Data Rescue so I ran that to recover everything I could from the current boot drive. In the recovered files there is a folder named "@@@@HFS+Private Data" that had nothing in it - it's the only one that is empty. Could this be evidence of the corruption on the drive?

Thanks for any "enlightenment" you can provide. I appreciate your taking to time to help me understand this better.

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Answer 7

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 6, 2015 10:37 AM in response to THX1136

Could this be evidence of the corruption on the drive?

Quite likely, as I recall from some crash of the OS.

Can't explain the old drive not booting, is it USB, FW, or IDE?

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Answer 8

THX1136 Author

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Jul 6, 2015 12:48 PM in response to BDAqua

It's an internal - IDE I assume (been so long since I was up on this stuff I don't remember like I should). I tried booting from it after the failed boots from the original drive and it acted the same as the bad drive. I would get all the way to the desktop, but when trying to open something like Mail or Appleworks I would get the "need to restart" message.

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Answer 9

BDAqua

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Jul 6, 2015 1:16 PM in response to THX1136

Normally MDDs use Cable Sect for Jumper settings, what are yours on all internal drives?

Does Console work?

Open console in Applications>Utilities, check the system log for the date/time of the last problem & the Startup right after that for clues.

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Answer 10

THX1136 Author

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Jul 7, 2015 7:01 AM in response to BDAqua

My guess is I have them set for cable select. I have not tried Console, but will do so. Sounds like that will prove interesting. Thanks for the suggestion!

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Answer 11

THX1136 Author

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Jul 8, 2015 7:20 PM in response to BDAqua

Console was interesting. There is a gap in the log file with the most recent items starting on 6/29. It was on the 28th that the issue first happened - most of the stuff detailed in the OP. I'm not sure I understand what I am looking at. I could identify when I ran Applejack. I found evidence of using Data Rescue, but not Drive Genius. I found where Pro Tools would not start also. There was this line in Console:

Jun 29 22:09:07 ron-carlsons-power-mac-g4 mDNSResponder[23]: ERROR: getOptRdata - unknown opt 65002

Along with these 2:

[Mon Jun 29 22:03:44 2015] [warn] Init: Session Cache is not configured [hint: SSLSessionCache]

httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using ::1 for ServerName

[Tue Jun 30 19:03:54 2015] [warn] Init: Session Cache is not configured [hint: SSLSessionCache]

httpd: apr_sockaddr_info_get() failed for ron-carlsons-power-mac-g4.local

httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName

A question: Since I am booted using Leopard from another internal drive - and not Tiger from the regular boot drive - will Console still show me what happened during the issues with the Tiger drive? I'm assuming yes, but do not understand why. Could you advise what I should be looking for, BD?

Thanks again for any help you can offer.

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Answer 12

BDAqua

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Jul 8, 2015 9:30 PM in response to THX1136

will Console still show me what happened during the issues with the Tiger drive?

No, not endless you navigate to the tiger drives logs & drag one to console.

Really tough to say what to look for, but check the first couple of minutes of the Date & Time on the Tiger System Log of the last failed startup.

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Answer 13

THX1136 Author

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Jul 9, 2015 6:26 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for the reply. I will attempt to find and open the logs from the boot drive. To see what would happen I tried to boot from it again tonight. It only got as far as the grey screen and then showed the "need to restart" overlay. Rebooted using Drive Genius and ran Verify. Got this message: "Verify failed: Volume bitmap shows block 67908 to be free but the catalog shows it to be used"

I then ran Repair and got the everything looks okay message. DG repaired items and then verified. Decided to run Rebuild. Got this message: "Mount failed for disk1s10 with operation not permitted. Please verify the filesystem, it may need to be repaired. (0xC001)" The icon for this drive still shows up on the desktop which strikes me as odd. More stuff I don't understand 😁!

As I have things that must be attended to from last weekend - over 7 hours of audio files which need prep, mixed and polish - I'm going to revisit the drive issue after I finish - or at least make significant headway on - those files. I normally rely on Pro Tools for this work which was on my boot drive. Need to reinstall it to my Leopard drive so I can get that work closer to done.

Again, I thank you for your time and direction, BD! I'll update when I can delve further into this issue.

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Answer 14

BDAqua

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Jul 9, 2015 7:40 PM in response to THX1136

OK. 🙂

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Answer 15

THX1136 Author

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Aug 9, 2015 5:34 PM in response to BDAqua

I'm back after finishing the project and 2 trips to Mayo for my wife. A friend is going to loan me Disk Warrior so I can see if it will correct things. I still have the corrupted boot drive's icon on the DT. I pulled Firefox from it to my 10.5 drive which I've been using to boot from - no issues. Emboldened, I tried pulling a utility - Clean My Mac - over to the current boot drive. Copied fine, found an update, but on open asks for my registration key/number. Did the same thing with Click Repair - copied over, but asked for registration key.

As of now, I've decided to concentrate on pulling the pertinent saved files from the Data Rescue save that I need. When/if I can get the original boot drive back in service I will. A couple of questions come to mind.

1) Where should I look for the registration key information on the Mac itself? I figure that info is stored much like cookies are stored in a browser. I will look in my saved "hard copy" documentation too, of course.

2) I came across a "gray" disc - Disc version 1.0, 2Z691-5499-A - that is the "Mac OS X Install Disc 2". "Includes Mac OS 9.2" is also printed on the disc. The copyright date is 2005. I assume there is a "disc 2" also - haven't found it yet. Could this be the disc that came with the MDD dual boot that would allow a system restore/repair?

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

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