Need Help, HD and Finder suddenly don't mount

Gregory Cortelyou chefgreg at mac.com
Thu Jan 16 22:17:16 PST 2003


Hi
So this morning I was putting my G4/350 AGP to sleep. As occasionally
happens, it did not fully go to sleep, I always suspect some USB conflict.
Anyway, I had to do a hard restart which I have done before. I am running
10.2.3 and have never had any major problems. Until now. So the restart gets
me logged in, gets to the desktop, but no HD mounts, got the dock, but the
Finder is inactive. Run disk first aid from Jaguar CD which tells me I have
an "overlapped extent allocation" and a some file code, this is repeated 5
times in a row before the end of the verification. DFA cannot repair the
problem. I have TechTool pro, the latest version on my 9.2 partition and ran
it from there and it found the problem, but after about an hour it crashed
and I shut down and went down to the Apple Store here in NYC. The genius
there told me that the "overlapped extent allocation" meant that during the
sleep/restart crash, something had written over something else on the disk
and this is very bad. I said, yeah. He said try Disk Warrior which I had to
buy. Disk Warrior did it's thing, created a new directory in about an hour
and a half. I inspected it, hit "replace" and crossed my fingers. At
restart, I get the same thing, no HD mounted and no Finder active. Dock is
there and functions, but no menu bar at the top. Ran disk first aid again
from Jag CD and it says "HD appears to be ok". Fsck -y says the same thing.
But it is not ok. I have other partitions and they are not affected. I have
backed up my home folder and am willing to reinstall but wish I didn't have
to. I will of course be terrified to ever try to put my computer to sleep
again. I have no crazy stuff attached via USB, just an old HP printer, a zip
drive, a keyboard, mouse, belkin hub, all things that have been on the
computer for 3 years. Am I wrong to suspect USB as a culprit in the sleep
problem? Anyway, right now I need some advice on how to get back up and
running on my 10.2.3 partition. Thanks.
Greg 



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