Computer stopped working as I was closing down a variety of programs. In trying to restore it to service I get to the "choosing Disk to restore" and it tells me the disk is locked. How can I unlock the disk?
iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2010), OSX10.8 or 10.9
That error may appear if the drive has failed. You can also try this:
Boot into single-user mode and at the prompt enter these commands pressing RETURN after each:
mount -uw /
chown root:admin /
chmod 1775 /
reboot
After rebooting open Terminal in the Utilities' folder. Paste these commands into the Terminal application to avoid typos:
sudo su
Press RETURN. Enter your admin password when prompted. It will not be echoed to the screen. Press RETURN again. Now paste each of the following at the prompt and press RETURN after each.
chown root:admin /Applications
chmod 0775 /Applications
chown root:admin /Library
chmod 1775 /Library
chown root:admin /System
chmod 0775 /System
chown root:admin /Users
chmod 0775 /Users
chmod -R -N /Applications
chown -R :admin /Applications/*
I suggest you first print these instructions out using a large mono-spaced font so you can read them correctly. There are spaces in the lines that may not be easily observed.
how to unlock the Disk?
