Lost finder

[Chris Gough]

Help! I have an iBook and my My Finder has vanished - altho does reappear briefly from time to time - and all the icons have vanished from my desktop. Happened pretty much all of a sudden, preceded by alarming grinding noises...do I have a HD problem? And how can I rescue the situation without losing everything I have on the iBook, espec the iTunes and iPhoto libraries?

Any advice appreciated!

 

[Danster]

Help! I have an iBook and my My Finder has vanished - altho does reappear briefly from time to time - and all the icons have vanished from my desktop. Happened pretty much all of a sudden, preceded by alarming grinding noises...do I have a HD problem? And how can I rescue the situation without losing everything I have on the iBook, espec the iTunes and iPhoto libraries?

Any advice appreciated!

Wow that's quite a problem you've got yourself there, do you have a cd/dvd burner which you could use to backup your files or a external HD or iPod?

Have you tried/ran repair permissions on your hard drive? (applications/utilities/disk utility)

How old is your iBook?

You may have some hardware problems if so, run the apple hardware test which is on your 3rd Mac OSX installation disk, to run the test simply pop the cd in and restart whilst holding the C key

You haven't put your dock on hiding have you ? And look into your trash can in case you've dropped all of your desktop files into it. But other than that I'm stumped sorry.

 

[Chris Gough]

The iBook's about 4 years old, had a new HD about 2 yrs ago following an unfortunate incident with an airport floor...I've run the hardware test, shows nothing wrong, tried repair permissions etc which didn't seem to do anything at all.

And no, I haven't got the dock hidden - it's in fact all I can see. And nowt in trash.

Mystery, huh? I guess best bet is to get me an ext HD, save what I can and do a clean reinstall?

 

[Danster]

Hmm it sounds like some of your important GUI files have been deleted or moved, have you been tinkering around the the system folders, changing icons or using apps like shape-shifter?

I think it's best for you to do an archive and install whereas you reinstall panther or whatever version your running and it keeps all your files I.E iTunes, iPhoto and reinstalls the OS so if you have lost some files(GUI) it will reinstall them for you.

 

[Ric]

Hi Chris,

when you turn on the iBook does it go through it's normal boot process ?

Grinding noises will either be the HD or the fan, (hopefully the fan!)

When iBook boots up is anything accesible ? Is the Hard disk visable on the desktop?

You said that the dock is visable, what happens when you click on one of the apps?

Can you boot up into single user mode ?

Not sure what you mean by the finder has vanished? Sounds like the finder is running but you can't see an icon for the Hard drive? is this right ?

If so can you got to the Finder menu and click on the preferences you will see a pane as attached does this have "Hd to be hidden?"

questions - questions?

regards

Ric

 

[Chris Gough]

Hi guys, thanks for the help, it's much appreciated - I'm not as mac-literate as I should be, brung up on PCs...

Re boot-up, normal except at end, when Finder toolbar flashes intermittently then disappears, and no icons except dock appear on desktop. HD icon is not visible.

Most apps in dock will open and function EXCEPT Finder - toolbar flashes on then vanishes. Some apps 'quit unexpectedly' - eg mail and sherlock, whilst others (iTunes, iPhoto) seem to function fine.

Sorry, not sure what's meant by 'single user mode'...

Re Finder, if I left click on icon in dock, toolbar appears momentarily, but not long enough so far to get the cursor on to it! If I right click, it sez first 'app not responding' then 'Finder not running'. So can't - so far - open Finder menu to get at Preferences.

Re GUI, no I haven't (knowingly) been tinkering nor using shape-shifter - altho did install Design Workshop Lite, a free 3D drawing app, then uninstalled as it seem to be very crashy.

Re archive/install, sorry to be so ignorant, how do I do this?

Thanks again...

Chris G.

 

[Ric]

Sorry, should have said: single user mode, reboot and hold down the command(apple) and S key.
This will flash up a lot of text etc and you will end up with a prompt...

From there you can run FSCK


I don't think this will fix it but you can give it a go !

I will have another think...

 

[Chris Gough]

Gave it a go and you were right - didn't fix it! It reported that HD had been repaired, but it's made no difference. Ho hum...

 

[Danster]

Maybe you should perform an archive & install, to do this pop your installation disk in and restart whilst holding the C key and follow the on-screen instructions telling it that you want to archive and install.

 

[Chris Gough]

Aaaaargh! Did the archive install as suggested, went thru the process, selected archive and install rather than erase... then when got to the point where it requires restart, clicked restart, all I get is a blank screen then a message comng up telling me that I need to restart.

I can restart it via the install disk, but all that lets me do is reinstall again...and I'm now out of space on the HD, short by 63mb even when I disable the various bits like language packs etc. It won't restart otherwise, or rather it just gets back to the message telling me I need to restart (I knew that...)

I went into disk utility on the install disk and ran repair - it sez it repaired HD but made no difference.

Beginning to panic somewhat...any thoughts?

 

[Chris Gough]

Re: Lost finder - further update

Since last post I've managed to remove install disc from drive and subsequently managed to boot up as single user....however, boot sequence only gets as far as Kernel Version, then sez..."panic: We are hanging here..."

Doesn't sound terribly encoraging to me. Any ideas for what next?

Happy days....C.

 

[Chris Gough]

Re: Lost finder - and more...

I've been goig thru the stuff in 'support' at apple.com - tried Startup Manager (holding option key whilst restarting). No got two broad horizontal bands, white with close packed vertical black lines over grey bgnd with blk apple...

Help!!

 

[Ric]

Re: Lost finder - and more...

Hi, Chris.

Hang in there, please do me a favour and don't try anything else yet !

How critical is the data on the Laptop?

Does the 'panic' give any more details?

Do you have any other computers? PC or Mac, are they connected to a network? Can they be connected to a network with the Mac? Crossover ethernet cable etc?

Do you have any external drives, cd/dvd writer etc that you can copy the iBooks data to?

regards

Ric

 

[alsadr]

hi ..
I had the same problem before.. I creat another user .. that is all . from the pref. -> user account -> new user .. it is working fine.
this comes cause the user pref. is damaged .
try this way.. after that make the new user as admin and copy your important files from the old user.
sometime the currepted fonts can make this problem with the user pref.

 

[Chris Gough]

Hi Ric -

OK, OK, I won't dabble, promise! (Alsadr, thanks for yr response, but I'll stick with Ric for the moment).

The data is not exactly 'critical' I suppose - but a load of music tracks (1000 +) and 00s of photos that are irreplaceable.

The 'panic' gave no more detail than quoted - and the message has in fact now gone. I switched off overnight, this morning booted in single-user mode and arrived at mac-boot screen - sez 'to continue booting, type 'mac-boot' etc'. However, when I do this, it just brings me to a black screen with the message panel as before telling me that I need to restart.

The Mac is networked to 2 PCs - when the problem first started I had tried to use the network to transfer the files I want, but Windows sharing was disabled on the Mac and simply would not load, so couldn't do that.

I have got an external HD (arrived today, ironically I'd ordered it so that I could back everything up just before it all went pear-shaped ). Haven't yet reviewed the manual, but not sure how I'm going to get anything of the Mac in its current state...

Meantime, I'll restrain myself from trying anything else! Cheers, C.

 

[Ric]

Hi, sorry for the delay...

the only reason I was saying to not do anything else, was to stop any further potential damage to your system...I didn't intend to sound bossy !

Alsadr's fix definately sounds plausible, if it had been done at the start, unfortunately.

I'm a little worried about where your data is now after doing a software archive/install.

In retrospect, it would have been better to transfer or make an image of the disk before doing anything else.

I am posting this reply incomplete and will add to it tonight or in the morning, just wanted to let you know that we are trying to find a fix...

...Now you have your new HD, can you plug it into your iBook and then put in the OS X install disk and try and load the OS onto the external drive. If we can then boot the iBook off the ext HD at least there will be no more damage caused.

Aaaaargh! ...but all that lets me do is reinstall again...and I'm now out of space on the HD, short by 63mb even when I disable the various bits like language packs etc. It won't restart otherwise, or rather it just gets back to the message telling me I need to restart (I knew that...)

Unfortunately after doing the first archive/install you appear to have got in a loop and have done it a few times-hence the hard disk becoming full...in theory the first install/archive is the one that we want-and should hopefully have your data in.

The reason that the iBook, now, will not boot, is more than likely that the HD is full...

more to follow...

 

[Chris Gough]

Thanks for your patience and persistence on this one!

I've connected the ext HD,started the iBook in Startup Manager. I can see the HD in Disk Utility, but it is unmounted - at 'Select a destination' pane in install sequence, only Mac HD available...

Any further thoughts?

C.

 

[Ric]

Can you tell me the exact make and model of your new HD, some of them come preformatted for Windows and will need formatting first, btw is it usb or firewire?

Will disk utility see the drive (format it) etc...Have a quick look in the new drives manual, does it come preformatted as NTFS, FAT32 etc. See if you can reformat the drive and let us know from there.

regards

Ric

 

[Chris Gough]

Hi Ric, good morning...

It's a LaCie 80Gb, and it can be Mac formatted using uDisk Utility acc to the manual - so I'll go ahead and do that. (Might be later, I've got some domestic things to do today too). Cheers, C.

 

[Ric]

Not a problem, yes domestic things await me to...lol

Should have said: Use the Apple Disk utility if possible, not the HD one...