Computer will not finish starting up...

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Computer will not finish starting up...

Recently I was surfing various myspace profiles (not my fault! I normally avoid it like the plague but I was looking for a specific ad for a friend). Like everyone else's problems with MySpace, Safari crashed. This wouldn't have been a big deal, but more than just that happened. I waited a few minutes for it to possibly "unfreeze" but to no avail, so I tried to force-quit, which then started freezing up other programs. So the next logical step for me? I manually shut-off the computer by holding the power button. After waiting about 10 or so seconds I tried turning it back on... It seems to start loading but instead of the usually quick start-up the computer takes forever to just get to the first white screen with the Apple and the little swirly thing below.
I thought it had frozen after waiting about 5 minutes, so I tried turning it off and on again... nope, same result. So the next time I waited, and after aproximately 25 minutes the screen went blue. After about 4 or 5 minutes the window that shows the MacOSX loading process opened up, but after waiting for about 10 minutes nothing happened beyond that. So I tried the simple unplugging everything and waiting a while to plug it back in, and now even after waiting aproximately an hour, my mac won't even get to the blue screen.

So I'm getting a little paranoid... any help?
(Also, sorry I posted this a few hours ago in the Mac Mini forum, but this forum seems more frequently posted at, and I'm mostly sure the problem is a software issue not hardware.)

Mac Mini: PowerPC G4 1.42 GHz. 1 GB; Toshiba Satellite: Celery 2.7 GHz, 512 MB, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Nov 1, 2006 9:59 PM

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Answer 1

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howwow

Level 4

3,538 points

Nov 1, 2006 10:29 PM in response to ABlochead

Try executing the Single User Mode when starting up:

1. Press Command + S keys together while starting up, release only when you see a blank black screen with scroll of text flowing

2. When all the text stops, you'll see a prompt at the end

3. Type in the command:
/sbin/fsck -fy

You can find this exact command just a few lines above the prompt

4. Hit return and wait for the process to finish; This is in essence booting and repairing the disk using Disk Utilities without using the physical OS disc

5. You'll see 1 of either 2 results outcome at the end: If it says this disk appears to be OK or something, OR something about Files Being Modified. The later simply says certain files have been repaired.

6. If you run the command again, this time round the final report will be the disk is OK

7. Type "reboot" to restart the Mac normally.

Hope this will help you boot up your mac, cheers

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Answer 2

ABlochead Author

Level 1

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Nov 2, 2006 1:20 PM in response to howwow

Thanks for the help but still no success... I tried that command and this is what comes up

** /dev/rdisk03
** Root file system
** Checking HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
disk0s3: I/O error.
Invalid sibling link
(4, 12894)
**Volume check failed.
and then the command prompt...

Any other suggestions or new info based off of that response?

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Answer 3

Nov 2, 2006 1:29 PM in response to ABlochead

An invalid sibling link is an extremely serious problem that will require a third party disk repair program like Disk Warrior to repair. In fact I believe that Disk Warrior is the only third party utility that can repair this problem, but I could be wrong about that.

EIther that or you will have to reformat your drive and reinstall from scratch.

The included Disk Utility that Apple ships cannot repair this type of damage.

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Answer 4

ABlochead Author

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Nov 2, 2006 1:40 PM in response to Al Van Malsen

well... a little speechless... so what do I do?

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