Disk Utility fails to launch

disk utility just won't open in my new Leopard install (Archive & Install).
Any ideas. Just one bounce in the dock and that's it.
Also when I print anything, the printer shows in the dock then crashes. The doc still prints though.
Thanks
Matt

Hi, I'm having the same problem. Every time I launch Disk Utility it says that it 'quit unexpectedly'
I ran the unix executable in the terminal and the startup gave this output:
/Applications/Disk\ Utility.app/Contents/MacOS/Disk\ Utility ; exit;
hbt-leibundgut-m-02:~ fmeggers$ /Applications/Disk\ Utility.app/Contents/MacOS/Disk\ Utility ; exit;
dyld: lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found: __commpagedsmos
Referenced from: /Applications/Disk Utility.app/Contents/MacOS/Disk Utility
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
dyld: Symbol not found: __commpagedsmos
Referenced from: /Applications/Disk Utility.app/Contents/MacOS/Disk Utility
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
Trace/BPT trap
logout
Is this a permission problem in the /usr folder with this dylib file? I'll try to restart in Safe Mode as suggested now.

Similar Messages

My Macintosh HD partition is damaged and the disk utility failed to repair it

I cannot boot anymore after I tried to repair the disk with Disk Utility after my Mac became very slow.
This is the second time it happened to me in a week with the same symptoms. When I try to boot, I see a gray screen and the computer just stops
When I use the recovery partition, the disk utility fails to repair the disk, stopping after failing to fix the catalog file.
I started to use TM to backup my data after erasing the disk and reinstalling Mountain Lion but I wonder if my hard drive is damaged because the same problem happened twice. (Thanks TM for keeping my data safe this time)
Any advice or ways to fix that once and for all ?
PS : The worst is that i can still boot with Bootcamp to Windows, not very useful though

rpignard wrote:
Any advice or ways to fix that once and for all ?
Since your Recovery HD and Windows partition work fine, the problem is located in your Macintosh HD partition and I very highly suspect it's bad/failing sectors that's to blame for your troubles.
This can sometimes occur if the computer was moved while the hard drive was in operation, else sectors fail all by themselves, or if the drive is having mechanical issues, which you problem will continue no matter what you do.
This time when you use Recovery > Disk Utility to erase the Macintosh HD partition, use the middle secure erase option, not the far left or right options (the right will work also just take a really long time)
What your doing is with the middle secure erase option is called a "Zero" write, which Disk Utility will write 0's over all the bits in that partition. When it's done it will read it back for confirmation and when it does so, any bits that are failing will be mapped off by the drive. Hopefully this will resolve the issue without needing a drive replacement.
Once that is completed, reinstall OS X from Recovery, any programs from original sources, files only from backup and your problems hopefully should disappear.
What happens is if your data gets corrupted on the boot drive by failing sectors, it gets transfered to TimeMachine (or to bootable clones) and when you restore your right back to square one. So it's important to rule out that possibility with original installs of OS X and third party programs.
If your problems continue, then it's possibly a problem with third party at boot kernel extension files, (and the catalog problem was yet another one) so to solve this you need to make sure all your third party software is updated and works with your current OS X version.
A trick is, if you get gray screen at boot time, is to hold the Shift Key while booting the computer, this will disable a lot of things and allow you to fix the third party software issue.
What I suggest you do is have multiple backup systems, including hold option key bootable clones, this way if your TM drive gets corrupted you can go back in time to a saved state on the clone, restore that and then your files from the TM drive.
Most commonly used backup methods

Keys out of order, disk utility fails

PowerPC (?, whatever came just before Intel-based machines) iMac running 10.3.something failed to boot - hangs at "Logging into OSX" window but never gets there to log in. Booting from Install CR-ROM and running Disk Utility fails to repair Catalog. Booting in single user mode results in "Keys out of order (4, 51882)" "The volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired". Also tried to boot from Prosoft "Data Rescue II" CD-ROM but no help
Any suggestions to repair/recover?
Files all appear to be there - can navigate around in Unix and list them. Also have external Lacie hard drives connected (unconnecting does not resolve problem) - Would there be a way to cp or rcp some key files to these external drives to at least recover some?

Welcome To  Discussions jeff_st!
If all else fails, and you have access to another Firewire enabled Mac, you can also use Firewire Target Disk Mode, to backup as much data as possible.
Then reformat the HD, zeroing all data, and perform an Erase & Install.
ali b

Hard Drive fubar? Disk Utility fail! New macbook...

My 2009 MBP tried to install a security update last night and failed - had the screen with the box advising to turn off and on again - after 2 power on attempts all was well and working fine.
I turned it off this evening and then turned it back on (I wish I hadn't) only to find a grey screen with a progress bar running along the bottom. The MBP will try a couple of times to start, but the progress bar only gets a 3rd of the way along and after two (three?) attempts it turns off.
I tried booting to safe mode (holding down shift) - tries to boot, fails as above.
Tried the install disc and holding down C - it tries to boot but fails as above.
I tried with command S for single user and made some progress...
typed:
/sbin/fsck -fy
and it ran a disc check, only to tell me the disc could not be prepared and ended with a Signal 8 (???????).
here is a shot of the screen (taken with a camera!):
http://www.olij.co.uk/diskutility_failweb.jpg
Is my hard drive failing?
Is the only solution to reinstall OS X and see what happens? I have a time machine backup (can't remember if it is full image, or just user files!)
Message was edited by: Oliver Jobson

Well, after holding down the power button for 5 seconds (reset EFI?) and clearing the PRAM I am now able to launch the installation DVD.
Disk repair didn't work in Disk Utility so I wiped it and tried to restore from the Time Machine - it isn't working. The process starts and then I come back to find it has failed and an error log.
It seems to go wrong after the process starts to restore the applications.
You can see two error logs, for two seperate restore events:
http://www.olij.co.uk/OSXrestore_crashlog1.txt
http://www.olij.co.uk/OSXrestore_crashlog2.txt
Looks identical and seems to be this bit:
Feb 26 16:31:33 localhost ReportCrash[192]: Exception Type: EXCBADACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Feb 26 16:31:33 localhost ReportCrash[192]: Exception Codes: 0x000000000000000d, 0x0000000000000000
Feb 26 16:31:33 localhost ReportCrash[192]: Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
that might be the major problem?
Is there still something wrong with the disk or (shudder) is the TimeMachine backup corrupt?
Message was edited by: Oliver Jobson

Wife about to give birth and Disk Utility failing to repair HD.

Good morning. Starting last night I began having serious issues with my 2007 20" 2.4ghz iMac. I hope someone can help before I employ the "nuke" option.
First a little background. My wife is about to give birth to our second child. I have several in-laws in town and my house is a wreck. So, last night I thought it would be a great time to upgrade my iPhone 3G to iOS 4. I am not implying that updating my phone caused the problems with my iMac but they started about 30 seconds after pushing the "Update" button in iTunes.
The phone did update to iOS 4 after about 3 hours of backing up but immediately the iMac started "hanging up" and the spinning beach ball appeared for minutes at a time. late last night after my iPhone was functioning again, I went to bed.
This morning, the iMac was still responding very slowly and I was getting the spinning beach ball for even longer periods of time. So, I rebooted the machine and upon reboot the iMac would get stuck on the grey screen with the Apple logo and a spinning gear.
I tried all of the methods on this support document.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570
It would not boot into Safe Mode.
I reset the NVRAM/PRAM.
I checked the power cables.
I removed all USB and perpherial attachments. (Including even trying to boot without the keyboard or mouse plugged in.)
After booting from the Install DVD and running Disk Utility, Disk Utility was telling me that almost the entire HD is available and that it could not repair the disk. I was receiving "Invalid Node Structure" and "Volume Check Failed" error messages.
So the last thing the support document suggested was a complete erase and re-install. I have been running Time Machine, but have never actually used it to recover anything, much less the 1000s of photos and 1000s of songs on the iMac.
Is there anything else I can or should try before pulling the plug and erasing the hard drive and praying that Time Machine has worked?
My very pregnant wife will have a heart attack if we lost everything on the computer. (I really am not joking that she might go into labor any second, her due date was last week.)
Thanks for the help and advice. I need it.

I know that I am a bother and asking alot of questions in quick succession, but I am hoping to take care of this before the baby makes its appearance.
I'm getting you have a lot on your mind right now, try not to not worry about it. Might be time to take a few deep breaths and try to relax.
If you have had your machine connected to Time Machine and it has been doing backups (I'm sure it has been) you have done everything necessary.
You can attempt an erase and restore however if your disk is dodgy or has failed at best it's a temporary solution. As I stated I would recommend taking it into an AASP and have it looked at.

Disk Utility Failing to Repair HD

I ran Disk Utility this morning from the Tiger installer CD for the sake of general maintenance. It failed, returning this:
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Disk Utility stopped verifying “Macintosh HD” because the following error was encountered:
The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair
I've been searching the forums here, but most of the similar posts seem to dealing with newly-installed hardware, or a disk with a S.M.A.R.T. status "Failing" (according to Disk Utility's Log window). Neither of these is the case. Has anyone seen this before?
Single 1.8 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Hi, Space Toast.
To add to Al's advice, see the "Disk Utility cannot repair the disk" section of my "Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption" FAQ.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Disk Utility won't launch

This might be a coincidence but I set up a new 2Tb Time Capsule today and assumed all was working as planned. I setup Time Machine to refer to the Time Capsule drive and the backups have been performed in keeping with the schedule etc.
My issue is that for some reason the Disk Utility doesn't display. The icon will bob in the dock and then after that nothing happens. Like I said, coincidence?
Latest OS X Lion 10.7.4 with one External HD attached and working as expected. In fact I used the Disk Utility only two days ago to format said external drive.
Any ideas anyone?

Try in safe boot mode ( start the machine with the left shift key held down) if it launches repair the disk permissions and the disk itself, reboot and re try.
If it doesnt work in safe boot mode, boot from the recovery partition in lion ( cmd + R while booting) if snow leopard or below boot from the install cd by holding c when your turn the machine on and try disk permissions from disk utility in that menu.
let me know that if doesnt help

Disk Utility fails to create encrypted disk image

When creating a disk image using 256 bit encryption and a purely numeric password longer than 13 characters the following message appears:
Unable to create "ABC.dmg." (error -60008)
the error happens upon typing the 14th consecutive number into the Password field. I have created images under the same conditions in the past, Not sure if this is caused by Lion.

Looks like one of the drives is bad.
While it passed being zeored with Disk Utility, it failed about 15 minutes into a 'Certify' using SoftRAID.
Now waiting on a replacement drive from Newegg.

Help! Disk Utility failed to restore my 750gb Mac HD

Here's the story. A couple weeks ago I successfully installed Windows 7 Home as a bootcamp partition using Disk Utility, not Bootcamp Assisstant, I clicked on my 750gb mac drive, clicked on partition, clicked the "+" symbol to split the HDD into a second partition, allocated 200gb for this Windows 7 partition remaining 550gb for Mac HD, made it into MS-Dos Format so I can format it into NTSF during the Windows installation; everything was working fine, I even was successfully running Parallels 7 with it.
So here's my problem, the other day I purchased Windows 7 Professional, decided I wanted to do a complete new installation so I went into my Mac OS X Lion and went into Disk Utility, deleted the Windows partition, then dragged the corner of my Mac HD putting it back to 750gb. Now my bootcamp partition of Windows 7 HD is deleted so I went ahead and hit the "+" to create a partition for Windows 7 Pro HD, it gave me a Failed Error message, so I went into my Mac OS HD and repaired Disk, even hit the set permissions button), those both didnt fix my problem of creating a partition.
So i go into bootcamp assistant and went through the process, i already have the mac drives, hit continue, then it showed me what i can allocate for Windows. It tells me I only have 345gb to allocate a Windows partition, but I should have 200gb ontop of that. My total HDD is 750gb and I only have 550gb available for me to use :(. How do I get the remaining 200gb i used from my old windows partiton I already deleted. By the way, I already allocated 750gb to my Mac HDD freeing up all the free space.
Can anyone help? I can send screenshots if needed.
Thank you!

Carbon Copy Cloner your Lion partition to a HFS+ Journaled formatted external powered drive, "hold option boot" from it, check it out and then use Disk Utility there to erase the entire drive and reformat, reverse clone.
You'll loose the Lion Recovery Partition, but you got clones on external drives.
You have to reformat the whole drive, as the GUID partition map is off and needs to be updated correctly.
Also you can download the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant in advance and/or create "hold c" Lion boot DVD's from the MacAppStore Lion installer by holding option key and clicking on Purchases and downloading the Lion installer again and following these instructions.
http://eggfreckles.net/notes/burning-a-lion-boot-disc/
Also just in case you need it as you can always boot your Snow Leopard disk and install then upgrade to Lion on a blank drive without a Lion Recovery Partition.
http://www.walterjessen.com/make-a-bootable-backup-snow-leopard-install-disc/
Once you got Lion up, then Bootcamp the Windows 7 Pro.
You can try WinClone to clone Windows, I don't know how well it will work with Lion, it hasn't been updated recently, your best bet would be to fresh install.

Disk Utility Fails / no archive & install / how can I save my stuff?

Hey all,
I've had my mac since January and have tried to take good care of it.
Recently I downloaded the updates for iLife '09. I left my computer open and plugged in to a power source, but it went to sleep at some point through the updating process. I woke it back up when I came back into my room to check on it, and the installation continued. It appeared to work fine after, and I closed the mac to sleep while I went to work. While I was gone, my boyfriend noticed that the apple logo was blinking rapidly, so he opened it and restarted. It starts up but doesn't get past the white screen with the apple and the circle loading icon.
I'm an r tard and haven't backed up my files recently, so I'm very keen to not erase my hard drive.
I used the osx installation disk and tried running disk utility, but it only gets so far and then has an error message:
Verifying volume "Macintosh HD"
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure.
Volume check failed.
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
I read about archive and installing, but when I go through the installation menu on my startup disk, I don't have an option to archive and install.
My mac is under warranty for hard drive issues, but not software issues. I'm a student and I would like to avoid sending it away to get fixed if it turns out to be a software issue.
Is there any way to tell if it's a hard drive issue or a software issue? Any way to back up my files? I tried to start up in safe mode, but it still didn't get past that white screen.
I suck at computers and am pretty hopeless, so if there's any advice y'all could give me... it would be fabulous.
Oh, and... uh... I'm actually not sure which version of os x I have. I know it's leopard, and I believe at least one set of updates has been installed since I purchased my mac 6 or so months ago.
Thanks so much. :]

Disk Utility cannot repair the error. You would need to purchase Disk Warrior to fix the error or reformat the hard drive. Do not attempt to do an Archive and Install until you have repaired the drive's directory structure.
If you have a backup drive you can use and access to another Mac with which you can share files over your local network, then you may be able to access your data and back it up. If your MacBook has a FireWire port than you can connect to another Mac with a FireWire port, then put your computer into Target Disk Mode to try accessing the hard drive from the other computer. However, Target Disk Mode only works over FireWire.
If you have an external notebook drive you could remove the drive from the MacBook, put it in the external enclosure (after removing the drive installed in the enclosure) then connect the drive to another Mac to see if you can access your files.

Disk Utility fails to partition

This is what it says:
Partition failed with the error:
Could not modify partition map because filesystem verification failed

Run disk utility on your hard drive to repair it also repair permissions, then give it a try.

10.4.3 Disk Utility fails to unmount non-Startup Volumes

When I first try to Verify, Repair or even Erase an internal SATA disk (not permissions; secondary drive) with Disk Utility, the first time it fails to do so returning "failed with error Could not unmount disk" - I think because .Trashes/501 is open (I'm doing an lsof on the Volumes in question).
The second time it works OK and Verifies etc.
Is this a known bug in 10.4.3 Disk Utility?
Is there a solution?
TIA
G5 DP 2 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Yes, I found it thanks to the expert help of Nick at Apple, who had me create a second User Account, in which I did not get the error, then binary chop all my 220 preferences until it turned out to be a corrupt loginwindow.plist!
Letting Tiger recreate this on restarting now has DU working as it should.
Thanks, AppleCare!

Disk utility fails to partition - restarting the compuyter is required

I would appreciate your help-I have tried to find a topic with the same problem but could not.
I want to partition my hard drive in order to have a second partition for time machine. I get an error message, saying that I have to press the power button for three seconds etc to restart the machine. And of course when I come back there is no partition.
So, now I try with the installation disk, and use the disk utility, I repair and verify the hard drive, and I try to partition it. After about 10 minutes, I get the same error message, having again to restart the MacBook. So, what´s wrong?
Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.
Thanks

Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

Disk Utility fails when formatting a drive

Hi, I have been having problem with Disk Utility when formatting a drive. Every time I format a drive, regarding of what volume format I choose, it will start the format and then fail shortly after.
The drives are then no longer mountable and Disk Utility will not be able to see the drive any more.
Can some one tell me why this is failing? I have only ever experienced this problem on my Mac Pro.
Thanks

Thanks, The Hatter. Sorry I didn't include the internal drive information because so far, I have been using disk utility to format external drives and every time I tried to use it to format, it will fail (have not tried to format an internal drive as I only have one internal).
This is the detail of my internal drive.
Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: WDC WD3200AAJS-41VWA0
Revision: 58.01D01
Serial Number: WD-WCARW3484394
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Bay Name: "Bay 1"
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
I have tried connecting external drives via, USB and Firewire. Have tried formatting drive to MS-DOS (Fat 32) or MacOS Extended and nothing works.
Please let me know if you need any more info.

Disk Utility Failed, Mac HD not working and cannot reinstall OSX

Hi,
I am totally frustrated.
Was working on capturing video using Final Cut Pro and the application froze. After repeated attempts, I kept getting the message to restart the G5.
I tried reinstalling Final Cut Pro - and installation failed. I ran disk utility first aid and found an error on the Mac HD (Startup Disk). So I restarted machine from the DVD (pressing the C button when restarting) and ran disk repair from the DVD OSX Utility. Still got the error that "First Aid Failed" Disk utility stopped repairing Macintosh HD because the following error was encountered. The underlying task reported failure on exit. HFS volume checked 1 volume could not be repaired because of an error. Repair attempted on volume 1, 1 volume could not be repaired.
Then I tried reinstalling OSX onto a second internal SATA HD. Installation failed. Try installing again.
So now what do I do?
I am running Mac OSX 10.4.9
Please help...urgent.
Thanks
MQ

Thanks for the answer...that's what I was thinking.
The following are various issues I am considering maybe the cause:
1. Memory - I installed 2GB a few weeks ago - third party.
2. External HDs - I installed an external Maxtor 1.5TB drive 3 days ago.
3. I live in Africa - and power frequently gets disrupted - even though the machine is on a "solatek" (power stabilizer and high end protector against spikes) - 2 days ago my UPS was down and for repairs - and we had three power outtages.
Lastly, as I mentioned I live in Africa - Mombasa - Apple tech support is almost non-existent here...so I am hoping I can resolve this without having to ship it abroad.
Please help and thank you...
MQ

Disk Utility fails to launch

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