EMac won't start up, only gets to "Starting Network File System"

Question

Would appreciate any help. I'm a novice. Have a 4-year-old eMac that offered updates for Quicktime and iTunes. I let it go ahead. Got to a point where it said to close iTunes before continuing update. I did close iTunes and OK'd to continue update. Right away the monitor became shaded it and said to restart. Now when I turn it off and try to restart, it makes the start-up sound and the circle clicks around and then suddenly stops. Then the blue line fills in until it gets to "Starting Network File System" and then becomes shaded again saying to restart. I did some research and tried holding down the option key while powering on. Now I have a Macintosh HD icon with a blue X, as well as a 3/4 circle w/arrow and a straight line arrow. Any help would be very, very much appreciated. Thank you. kcorbett

Answer 1

bjadk,
Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
If Apple Hardware test is reporting RAM memory errors, no amount of reinstalling, or Disk Warrior, or anything else, will help. The install and repair attempts, sabotaged by bad RAM, would actually corrupt the hard drive worse on each attempt.
Do you recall how much RAM was in the eMac? Did you get RAM size reports from AHT? Check the RAM slots on the eMac by opening the access door on the bottom (see eMac - Do-It-Yourself). If there are two DIMMS, pull the one in DIMM slot 1 (that'll be the one on the top if I recall correctly). Removing the bad RAM may leave you with too little RAM to actually run the eMac; you can check your eMac model and use that info to order good RAM from Crucial.
Yet another potential problem comes to mind. If the Mac is three years old and hasn't been used much, has it been largely turned off and either unplugged, or plugged into a surge protector that was itself turned off? It the Mac hasn't been able to draw a trickle current while nominally turned off, the PRAM battery could be drained, which can also interfere with starting up and using the computer. You can use a voltmeter to check the battery while in the battery holder and replace it if it's more than 0.1v below the nominal 3.6v value.
When AHT gives the RAM a clean bill, use your OS X Install disc to boot the computer and again try Repair Disk and/or use single-use rmode to run fsck (per Using Disk Utility and fsck). IF Repair Disk/fsck report making repairs, repeat that step until it either reports no problems found or unable to repair, since one directory error can mask other errors. As already mentioned, DiskWarrior has an excellent track record of making repairs where Disk Utility could not.
If Disk Utility or Disk Warrior repair the disk, you can proceed to an Archive and Install (you'll need 5 GB or so free space on the hard drive to do an A&I; if space is tight, use the Installer options to select language support for only the language(s) you actually use).
If no utility can repair the disk, an Erase & Install with the one-pass write zeros option selected could recover use of the drive, by forcing the drive to update it's record of bad disk sectors to avoid. This would lose any data and programs for which you don't have a backup or install discs, through.