Blue screen hangs logging in as main user (tried extensive troubleshooting)
My systems state has been progressively declining...
First symptoms: while using my external FW drive, under heavy read/write use the drive would unexpectedly unmount, giving the "unmount your drive before disconnecting it to avoid data loss" message.
I ran DiskWarrior on the external drive. It still would unmount. Somewhere online I read that zapping the PRAM may fix it. I did that. That's when things got bad.
My computer began beachballing all over the place, so I rebooted. Full disclosure: it's been running slow sometimes due to the SOHO Sync process (I am running the SOHO Notes 5.7.0 beta, and I haven't ruled out this software as the culprit). Upon reboot, it would hang on a blank blue (aqua) screen - after the gray screen but before the login window or anything.
I booted into single-user mode and ran fsck. It found nothing wrong.
Tried to boot into Safe mode extensively. Sometimes I could get to the login screen. Tried extensively logging in as my user, it would just hang on a blue screen. The secondary user works, although sometimes verrrry slow (beachballs).
I began following the instructions in this article. Many of the first solutions (#'s 1-3) involve Safe mode, but since my account couldn't get into Safe mode I began moving Preference files and such using single-user mode (#'s 4-6). On step 7, I got through items a-m, but the rest of it is contingent upon being able to log in, which I still was not.
Using the secondary login, I was able to open Console and glean some information from that. mdimportserver was crashing over and over again, sometimes causing crashdump to crash as well. I figured this explained the slow performance and intermittent beachballing while using the secondary user. lsregister was also crashing occasionaly. In system.log, I saw several I/O errors.
Finally I decided to run DiskWarrior from the CD. It found some errors (I can post the report later) and corrected them. I rebooted, still would blue screen on my login name.
I reset the PMU. After this the secondary user ran pretty much normally for a short time. I removed the couple third-party mdimport files (Spotlight plugins) I could using the list dump from running mdimportserver -L and renaming the third party ones. (I know SOHO Notes includes Spotlight support now, but I could not find their plugin for the life of me, I'm not sure how they have enabled Spotlight support).
Still getting I/O errors in system.log. The secondary user is not working very well anymore (slower w/ beachballs).
This whole time the SMART status of my boot drive has been "Verified"
So - is my drive dead?
PowerBook G4 1.5Ghz (12) Mac OS X (10.4.2)
First symptoms: while using my external FW drive, under heavy read/write use the drive would unexpectedly unmount, giving the "unmount your drive before disconnecting it to avoid data loss" message.
I ran DiskWarrior on the external drive. It still would unmount. Somewhere online I read that zapping the PRAM may fix it. I did that. That's when things got bad.
My computer began beachballing all over the place, so I rebooted. Full disclosure: it's been running slow sometimes due to the SOHO Sync process (I am running the SOHO Notes 5.7.0 beta, and I haven't ruled out this software as the culprit). Upon reboot, it would hang on a blank blue (aqua) screen - after the gray screen but before the login window or anything.
I booted into single-user mode and ran fsck. It found nothing wrong.
Tried to boot into Safe mode extensively. Sometimes I could get to the login screen. Tried extensively logging in as my user, it would just hang on a blue screen. The secondary user works, although sometimes verrrry slow (beachballs).
I began following the instructions in this article. Many of the first solutions (#'s 1-3) involve Safe mode, but since my account couldn't get into Safe mode I began moving Preference files and such using single-user mode (#'s 4-6). On step 7, I got through items a-m, but the rest of it is contingent upon being able to log in, which I still was not.
Using the secondary login, I was able to open Console and glean some information from that. mdimportserver was crashing over and over again, sometimes causing crashdump to crash as well. I figured this explained the slow performance and intermittent beachballing while using the secondary user. lsregister was also crashing occasionaly. In system.log, I saw several I/O errors.
Finally I decided to run DiskWarrior from the CD. It found some errors (I can post the report later) and corrected them. I rebooted, still would blue screen on my login name.
I reset the PMU. After this the secondary user ran pretty much normally for a short time. I removed the couple third-party mdimport files (Spotlight plugins) I could using the list dump from running mdimportserver -L and renaming the third party ones. (I know SOHO Notes includes Spotlight support now, but I could not find their plugin for the life of me, I'm not sure how they have enabled Spotlight support).
Still getting I/O errors in system.log. The secondary user is not working very well anymore (slower w/ beachballs).
This whole time the SMART status of my boot drive has been "Verified"
So - is my drive dead?
PowerBook G4 1.5Ghz (12) Mac OS X (10.4.2)