Mac stalls during startup

Question

My PowerBook currently stalls during startup (a dark grey apple on a light grey bground with a circling sun). I have tried holding down the C key as my Mac starts up and then clicking the hard disk icon and then the right arrow (my Mac just stalls on the grey apple again once I've done this). I have also tried Disk Utility and the Apple Hardware Test. Neither identifies any errors, except when I try to Repair disk permissions Disk Utility reports an Internal Error - 'Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue'. I have tried restarting the process many times but I always get this same message.
The problem began when I attempted to export a QuickTime movie in QT Pro as an MPEG-4. I attempted to resave the MPEG-4 as a QT movie afterwards. QT then created a gastronomically huge .mov file when I attempted to do this. A file in the region of 32GB! (It should have been less than 1MB). My computer crashed after it told me my hard disk was almost full (there is now only 2.7GB free). This has happened to me before but normally what I can do is restart my Mac and then delete the offending .mov file, however this time I can't even get into my Mac to do this.
I don't want to format my hard disk as I did this only last week after a problem with OS Tiger that I subsequently deleted and reverted back to OS Panther. I have created a lot of work since then that I haven't backed up anywhere else.
If anyone has any ideas… I'd be v v grateful
leo

Answer 1

Leo: The procedure you've been using to Repair Disk is exactly right. If you wanted to Repair Permissions, though, you'd have to be able to boot to your hard drive first. Because you're unable to boot to your HD, and yet you mentioned trying to Repair Permissions, I pointed out that under present circumstances that won't be possible. Sorry if my post was confusing.
IF your FireWire hard drive has a bootable OS on it — which you'd have to have installed on it or cloned from your internal drive — you can boot the PB to that drive. Connect the drive to the PB, turn the drive on, hold down the Option key, select the external drive as the startup voloume, and allow startup to complete. Assuming that the overly-full internal hard drive then mounts on the desktop normally, you should be able to open it up in the Finder, locate the monster file, trash it and empty the trash. This is all academic, though, if there's no bootable OS installed on the external drive — which you'll know is true if it doesn't appear as a selectable startup volume when you hold the Option key down at startup.
In that case, it might be wise to look for another Mac to which you could temporarily connect your PB in FireWire Target Disk Mode. You could then trash the monster file by accessing your PB hard drive from the host Mac. This could be accomplished in five minutes at an Apple dealership, using a demo Mac on the showroom floor, if you have no other options and can find a helpful dealer. I propose this option because I don't know where to suggest you look for a bootable CD that allows Finder access, unless you have the hardware, software, and knowhow to burn one. I don't believe I have one myself. I don't need one, because my backup hard drives are all bootable.