mac problem

[myrrh]

So, my friend calls me up and says his mac is dead. I take my laptop over so we have internet access and take a look at it.

It doesn't let you boot up in OS X and when you boot up in OS 9 the screen is all distorted looking. The basic stuff like reseting the RAM and going through restarting it were done.

In OS X, it tells you that you need to restart the computer, then after restarting it, it tells you that again, and basically enters into a loop.

In OS 9, you have some degree of doing things, but I suck at OS 9, since I have been only using my Mac since OS X.

I figured that it would be best to reformat it. It wouldn't let you boot off the OS X disk, but it did let you boot of the OS 9 disk. When it began to reformat it gave us this error:

macintosh HD could not be checked

It asked to continue without checking, or to cancel the install.

I checked online and didn't see anything that might be useful in explaining what this error is. Does anyone have any idea's or suggestions?

[stimpee]

Well as you seem to have gone ahead and tried to reformat then there's no point in suggesting any solutions to repair the disk.

I would have suggested using Data Rescue X,Tech Tool Pro, Drive 10, Disk Warrior or the underground bootable Mac Repair CD. I'm just wondering whether the disc has now been partially formatted or not.

[myrrh]

I canceled the install but you can still go into OS 9 and do everything from there.

[stimpee]

then you need a bootable X tools disc such as the ones i mentioned above. there is an underground release bootable disc that's called "Mac Repair CD". its a disc image, ive seen versions 3.4 to 3.9 floating around on torrents. that should fix the problems.

[crank]

Disc Warrior is really the best at diagnosing and repairing. Was there a boot disc that came with the 'puter? Typically machines come with specific reboot discs.

[stimpee]

adrian, come along to #rtsr and i'll try and hook you up with some repair tools.