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Help! What have I done? Circle with a slash through it at start-up!
Posted by: Grateful11
Date: December 22, 2005 08:25PM
Believe it or not I half dozed off while in the Finder and the next thing I
know it's froze up with a spinning beachball. I tried to force quit and
nothing would force quit. I pressed the power button until it turned
off and then restarted. Now all I get is the circle with a slash. I tried
to start up off the Panther CD while holding down the "C" key but no
go. What have I done? I sort of remember clicking on File or Edit
and I believe I may have released on something but I have no idea
what. I'm not drunk or high just very tired winking smiley, I'm awake now though.

Thanks for any help.
Grateful11
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Re: Help! What have I done? Circle with a slash through it at start-up!
Posted by: PeterB
Date: December 22, 2005 08:46PM
Disk corruption. Zap PRAM a few times, then boot from your CD, or from a DiskWarrior CD, run that...




Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)
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Re: Help! What have I done? Circle with a slash through it at start-up!
Posted by: MacMagus
Date: December 22, 2005 09:05PM
Nevermind.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/22/2005 09:12PM by MacMagus.
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Re: Help! What have I done? Circle with a slash through it at start-up!
Posted by: Grateful11
Date: December 22, 2005 09:09PM
PeterB Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Disk corruption. Zap PRAM a few times, then boot
> from your CD, or from a DiskWarrior CD, run
> that...
>
>
>
> ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!


Thanks PeterB! You're my saviour tonight. You know I guess that
one of the downfalls of OSX, it runs so well when something like this
happens I don't know what to do. Wasn't like OS9 you had to know
how to fix things with it.
Thanks again,
Grateful11
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Re: Help! What have I done? Circle with a slash through it at start-up!
Posted by: PeterB
Date: December 22, 2005 09:32PM
Yes, I find X is counterintuitive in that way-- it's hardly "trouble-free" (at least, that hasn't been my experience), and when problems occur, it's not quite as straightforward as it was in 9 to troubleshoot...

My question is-- isn't SMART supposed to forewarn you of disk troubles-- if so, then how come by the time it tells you something's wrong, your data is usually already hosed? It seems like disk corruption is X's Achilles' heel...




Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/22/2005 09:33PM by PeterB.
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Re: Help! What have I done? Circle with a slash through it at start-up!
Posted by: Grateful11
Date: December 22, 2005 10:25PM
All I know is "I'm Back Baby"! OSX has been the most stable, for me, of any OS I've ever used from WIN 3.1 to XP and OS 7.5 to 10.3.9.
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Re: Help! What have I done? Circle with a slash through it at start-up!
Posted by: DP
Date: December 23, 2005 07:43AM
SMART will say that all's well even when it isn't. I had an issue loading OS X (10.3) on a friend's machine and when I tried starting it in X all I got was the circle-and-line. I had to boot from an external I have to get it back to OS 9 so she could get work done. After that, she said not to bring OS X anywhere near her machine again! And I had a hard drive issue where SMART said all was fine. If you have an external drive, be sure to back up a copy of your system to start from if you have the same problem again and don't forget to repair permissions.
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Re: Help! What have I done? Circle with a slash through it at start-up!
Posted by: bangman
Date: December 23, 2005 09:28AM
Don't you have to go to disk utility to check on the SMART.

On my Lombard laptop I use an app. that shows up in the menubar as a SMART indicator. It's green when it's fine and changes color when a problem is coming up. Can't remember the name of the application.



---------
3GHz - The clock is STILL ticking Steve.
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Re: Help! What have I done? Circle with a slash through it at start-up!
Posted by: PeterB
Date: December 23, 2005 09:39AM
Yes, there are various applications (SMARTReporter I think is the one that Bangman is thinking of, but DiskWarrior and other utils have similar features) that will let you see the SMART status without checking Disk Utility... the problem is, it seems like a lot of the time, SMART either doesn't catch something, or is too late to help.

The other thing is, my understanding is that every time after a full machine crash, OS X runs fsck (or whatever it is) on your startup disk on the next restart. You apparently don't see this-- it's the equivalent of OS 9's "Your machine was not shut down properly... I am running Disk First Aid on the drive" thing, except that you don't see any of it, including error messages.

This could be disastrous, because as we all know, Disk Utility/fsck doesn't fix everything-- so you could then be working on a system which has serious disk corruption and you don't even know about it. Then finally, after a period of time and/or incremental damage, your system is totally hosed... and then you're in a position of having to run Disk Warrior as a form of rescue operation. So it's almost like an accident waiting to happen...




Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)
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