Kyle Good

Q: Can't Get Anywhere on my Computer!! I have Finals in a Week!!!

Hey I can't get into my computer anymore. I've tried to log back in through safe mode, but underneath my ID it says Update Needed. I then tried to proceed into the guest account to try to figure things out but all I had available was Safari. Now I've tried hard rebooting my Mac but I don't have any of my files backed up. Is there any way I can restart my computer from a previous time before I had all these crashes and problems? Or am I completely out of luck! Someone please help

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Dec 5, 2015 9:10 PM

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Q: Can't Get Anywhere on my Computer!! I have Finals in a Week!!!

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  • by Kyle Good,

    Kyle Good Kyle Good Dec 5, 2015 11:12 PM in response to FriedWaffle
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    Dec 5, 2015 11:12 PM in response to FriedWaffle

    Lol idk. But give me a sec. everytime I have to go back and forth, thank you so much for being patient. I'll be back in 5

  • by Kyle Good,

    Kyle Good Kyle Good Dec 5, 2015 11:25 PM in response to FriedWaffle
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 5, 2015 11:25 PM in response to FriedWaffle

    Lol idk. But give me a sec. everytime I have to go back and forth, thank you so much for being patient.

     

    I made a "new image" of disk1 which contains the OS X Base System in it (and when I hover my mouse over it it says start-up disk. disk1 gives me an option to create a new image but Base System does not. I think I'm doing what you're talking about.)

     

    The disk image created from disk1 which I saved to my external hard drive is

         using: 1.3 MB

         capacity: 31.3 MB

  • by Kyle Good,

    Kyle Good Kyle Good Dec 5, 2015 11:27 PM in response to FriedWaffle
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 5, 2015 11:27 PM in response to FriedWaffle

    idk if you can see my post, for some reason it doesn't appear here. But the new image created is using 1.3 MB and has the capacity of 31.3 MB

  • by FriedWaffle,

    FriedWaffle FriedWaffle Dec 5, 2015 11:38 PM in response to Kyle Good
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 5, 2015 11:38 PM in response to Kyle Good

    Ah, there's the problem. That's not your startup disk. That's the recovery partition. You want to create an image from what will probably be called  "Macintosh HD", which will usually be the second option in the list. Depending on how many documents and pictures you have, it should be no less than 20GB in size at the bare minimum, and is likely much larger. This will take more than five minutes to do. Take a look at the screenshot for additional information.

     

    screenshot.png

  • by Kyle Good,

    Kyle Good Kyle Good Dec 5, 2015 11:39 PM in response to FriedWaffle
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 5, 2015 11:39 PM in response to FriedWaffle

    Ahh yes thank you. I tried to make an image of it, and Idk if it let me. I will try again

  • by FriedWaffle,

    FriedWaffle FriedWaffle Dec 5, 2015 11:41 PM in response to Kyle Good
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 5, 2015 11:41 PM in response to Kyle Good

    In the meantime, I will get some sleep. It is 1:40 in the morning over here. Let me know what happens.

  • by Kyle Good,

    Kyle Good Kyle Good Dec 5, 2015 11:55 PM in response to FriedWaffle
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 5, 2015 11:55 PM in response to FriedWaffle

    I had to unlock Macintosh HD so I could create a new image

     

    When I went to save the new image in the external hard drive, it said : unable to create "Macintosh HD Start Up.dmg" (input/output error)

     

    Thanks again, night

  • by FriedWaffle,

    FriedWaffle FriedWaffle Dec 6, 2015 11:23 AM in response to Kyle Good
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 6, 2015 11:23 AM in response to Kyle Good

    I thought that might happen. Looks like you will need to partition the external drive, and restore the startup disk to the partition on the external drive. The only hiccup in this process may be the actual partitioning of the external drive. Depending on what format the external drive is, you may not be able to modify the partitions without deleting the current partition. It will tell you if you are unable to simply resize the partitions. Look for something similar to what is in the red box in the image below. Also, if you can resize the partitions, the + won't be grayed out, and you will be able to drag the divider between the partitions (represented as white boxes on the left) in order to resize them.

    screenshot2.png

     

    Make sure that you make the partition big enough to hold the startup disk ("Macintosh HD"). An example size can be seen in the red box in the image below. I'd give it at least a 5GB cushion.

     

    screenshot3.png

     

    Once you do that/if this doesn't work, go ahead and attempt to turn off the encryption on the disk. You can find that under the File menu, as shown below. Enter your password when necessary, and if it's grayed out, you may need to unlock it first, as detailed above.

     

    Screen Shot 2011-06-25 at 9.10.36 AM

     

    Hopefully this can resolve your issue. If not, I strongly recommend taking it in to the nearest Certified Repair shop.

  • by my ginger,

    my ginger my ginger Dec 6, 2015 12:13 PM in response to Kyle Good
    Level 4 (2,472 points)
    Dec 6, 2015 12:13 PM in response to Kyle Good

    Wether you did it or not I think you have FileVault enabled. What I mean is if you installed Yosemite from the app store it may have got enabled during the install. I would try booting by going to safe mode. Hold the shift key down at startup.  And if you can ,go to system preferences security-  FileVault and disable it. It will ask for a password which should be the same as your administrator password or your apple id password. If you cannot do this. Post back as you will have to go to recovery and use terminal.

  • by Kyle Good,

    Kyle Good Kyle Good Dec 6, 2015 1:00 PM in response to my ginger
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 6, 2015 1:00 PM in response to my ginger

    Okay that's a bummer. I remember being able to partition my external hard drive and the new partition would delete what I have on it currently. I'll go ahead and try all of that, but I remember seeing the Master Boot partition scheme is in place.

  • by my ginger,

    my ginger my ginger Dec 6, 2015 1:05 PM in response to Kyle Good
    Level 4 (2,472 points)
    Dec 6, 2015 1:05 PM in response to Kyle Good

    Master Boot Partition is for windows operating systems. Mac in oS X use GUID.

  • by FriedWaffle,

    FriedWaffle FriedWaffle Dec 6, 2015 1:09 PM in response to my ginger
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 6, 2015 1:09 PM in response to my ginger

    If the external hard drive was formatted with an MBR, then you may need to use Disk Management on a Windows machine to create a partition or block off free space first.

  • by Kyle Good,

    Kyle Good Kyle Good Dec 6, 2015 1:37 PM in response to FriedWaffle
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 6, 2015 1:37 PM in response to FriedWaffle

    The external hard drive was partitioned with enough space for everything. Is there any specific type of partition it needs to be for it?

  • by Kyle Good,

    Kyle Good Kyle Good Dec 6, 2015 1:38 PM in response to FriedWaffle
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 6, 2015 1:38 PM in response to FriedWaffle

    I also tried unencrypting the HD Mac but it wouldn't respond. I unlocked it then tried to verify it but it kept telling me it needed to be repaired, but the repair icon would not highlight so I couldn't click on it

  • by my ginger,

    my ginger my ginger Dec 6, 2015 1:51 PM in response to Kyle Good
    Level 4 (2,472 points)
    Dec 6, 2015 1:51 PM in response to Kyle Good

    I know I'm answering your older post, but as I now know the external drive is Master Boot Record, I can tell you that you can read the drive but not write to it in Mac.

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