Startup Disk is Locked?

I'm working on an older Mac (G3 Blue & White PowerPC w/OS 8.6) for a customer and there are many problems. The one I'm facing now is an error that reads "Startup Disk is locked. Your changes will not be saved when you quit Sherlock. This happened when I clicked Sherlock in the Apple Menu.
I'm wondering if this problem is causing the other problems as well. Some of those include will not boot to original desktop without the OS CD. Missing .Pics folder...this being the most critical loss. Startup Disk and Apple Talk are the only two Control Panels. Chooser, Control Panels and Sherlock are the only things in the Apple Menu.
I've retrived her documents from the hard drive but not the pictures.
I'm kinda new to Mac's (if you haven't noticed) but learning everyday!
Love em'
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
PhilW
Dual 867 MHz PowerPC G4 Mirrored Door Mac OS X (10.4.5) 1GB DDR Ram, 80 GB HD

Hi, PhilW -
...will not boot to original desktop without the OS CD.
It sounds like the machine is being booted to the OS Install CD.
Startup Disk and Apple Talk are the only two Control Panels. Chooser, Control Panels and Sherlock are the only things in the Apple Menu.
Those are the only items of those kinds included in the OS on an OS Install CD.
Although an OS Install CD will install a more complete OS, with a full assortment of control panels, Apple Menu items, extensions, etc., the OS on the CD, which is what is running the machine when the machine is booted to the CD, has a very limited assortment of them.
The one I'm facing now is an error that reads "Startup Disk is locked. Your changes will not be saved when you quit Sherlock.
That is not an error. When the machine is booted to a CD, the CD is the startup disk. Since such a CD can not be written to under any circumstances (which is one of their advantages), it is, in effect, a locked disk.
With the machine booted to the CD, have you tried selecting the OS on the hard drive in the Startup Disk control panel? It may be that the CD was the last boot volume set in that control panel, hence set in PRAM; and that is why it seems not able to boot unless the CD is in the drive. Resetting the boot volume in Startup Disk would be the solution for that.
If there is no selectable OS on the hard rive presented in Startup Disk, that would indicate one of three things -
• The System Folder on the hard drive has become 'unblessed'. The solution for that is to re-bless it. To do that, go to the System Folder on the hard drive (not the one on the CD). Drag the files System and Finder out onto the desktop. Close the System Folder. Drop those two files back into the closed System Folder on the hard drive.
• The System Folder on the hard drive has become damaged in some way, to the point it is no longer capable of booting the Mac.
• There is no valid System Folder on the hard drive.
The solution for the last two is the same - re-install the OS. You can do that while booted to the OS Install CD. Run the program Mac OS Install, and follow the prompts to do a normal (generic) install of the OS.
If there is a System Folder already on the hard drive, and it is necessary to re-install the OS, it would be wise to do a Clean Install of it. Note that a Clean Install removes nothing - it will install a brand new, 'clean' System Folder, rename the old one to Previous System Folder, and little else.
Article #58176 - Mac OS 8, Mac OS 9: Performing a Clean Installation

Similar Messages

Select Startup Disk Locks Computer?

Hello! I'm a long time Mac user and OS9 is old work but I've run into a problem I can't seem to alleviate. When I click to select a startup disk in the startup disk control panel it locks the computer. My utilities all give me a clean bill of health and I haven't done or added anything to the system folder in the last couple of years. I haven't had any crashes or locks in a couple of years also. I tried trashing the startup disk prefs file which had no effect also. Usually I don't have any problems sorting out an extension problem but I'm at a loss on this one. Any ideas? Tom
Oh yes, the computer is a G-3 minitower, 768 megs of ram, one internal scsi on sys bus, one internal ide drive and an internal scsi on a card; also an external firewire drive. OS9.2.2.And the problem manifests itself on any drive selection. Tom

Hi, Tom -
That sometimes happens when a 3rd-party driver has been installed.
Although OS 9's Drive Setup can not initialize and format drives connected via firewire or USB, it can do that for SCSI drives. However, if the drive has had 3rd-party drivers installed, their presence can confound Drive Setup.
The solution then is to put the drive into a PC and format it as a PC drive. Then bring it back to the Mac; Drive Setup should then work on it. Unfortunately, it may be difficult to find a PC which can handle a SCSI drive.
An alternate may be to use OSX's Disk Utility, which in many ways is more robust and capable than OS 9's Drive Setup.
Since the drive is working now, redoing it may not be of great priority - but it is something to keep in mind for the future, such as if (or when) you install OSX on that machine.

Why the lock icon unlocked automatically in startup disk

why the lock icon unlocked automatically in startup disk.

You have to know the old password in order to change to the new one if you select the user anyway, so no.

Locked startup disk 10.8.2

Strange but true. Using 10.8.2 on my MacBook Air 11-inch, Late 2010 120 SSD Model: APPLE SSD SM128C Revision: Serial Number: S0N7NEAZC04160 with minor problems, is extremely slow, but not nearly as many problems as with my iMac 21.5 16 GB 500 GB. Latest is shortly after the upgrade, unexpected restarts, color wheel with the accompanying snail speed, Adobe PSE refuses to start and today starts to install something when starting up (cold start) but shuts down after a short period). Disk Utilities says the disk is locked.
The experimenting was interesting, but beta testers get paid to do this stuff.
I'm going back to 10.7 until Apple gets their **** together.

There are several things you can do to improve Mountain Lion:
Repair permissions, reset PRAM.
Be sure all other software, including especially login items and third-party preference panes, are up to date and compatible with ML.
Clear caches (I use OnyX).
Some users also find it beneficial to reset SMC.
Some of the tips here can be instructional even after upgrading.

Trying to get rid of error "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition". Recovery HD visible.

Hello,
I've been stuck for some hours now trying different things to install Windows 7 on my Macbook Air, and I think now is the time to call for some custom help.
I'm using OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks.
So some months ago I just wanted to run Linux on my laptop so I installed rEFInd, shrunk the Macintosh HD partition by 25GB and booted on a linux live USB flash I burned using dd.
Then I used gparted to create my linux partitions.
It worked just fine, even though disk utility from OS X seemed quite unhappy about this (it seemed to have incorrect informations about the filesystem on these partitions, seeing them as journaled Mac OS while they were clearly not). At this point already, the Recovery HD from mac showed up in disk utility, which I found weird but didn't bother me.
But recently I needed windows on my Mac. So after a few tries for the triple boot, I managed to create a bootable USB stick with boot camp, which already showed me the message "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition" and hence refused to partition/install himself.
So I thought "OK, that's no big issue, I can just partition with disk utility and then boot on the USB stick and everything will work fine". But when EFI booting on the USB flash drive I got stuck at the beginning of Windows installer with no keyboard or mouse support.
After some hours spent googling, I was unable to find a working fix for that, and as there was no support for my case (where I used bootcamp to create the bootable flash but NOT to partition/reboot) I decided to give bootcamp a try.
So I erased my linux partitions, and cleaned up everything I could on the HD with disk utility. That means I now have two partitions showing in disk utility : Macintosh HD and Recovery HD.
When using disk utility from terminal, the list is :
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            80.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk0s3
But boot camp still isn't happy, and the message "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition" keeps popping after the intro and I can't partition/boot from bootcamp.
So, as I don't understand what is wrong here anymore, any help would be greatly appreciated!
I will be watching the thread a lot because I really would like this resolved (or windows installed one way or another) this weekend; so any questions on my past manipulations or config just ask!
Thank you.

keyboard issues are also something of a common issue.
I wish the best threads were voted to the top of forums, something! Me, I literally burned out here, but after installing 10 Preview, wanted to "see what was going on" after hiatus of a couple years and see if anything had changed (no, not really!)
Also, these new Communities are not putting "more like this" and failing to help too.
I think rewriting Boot Camp Assistant's built in help and pdf would help a lot, and needs to be clearer and go into details. And Yosemite was not it seems tested against Boot Camp, and drivers for new Macs + new OS also lag behind. Again, common and no sign of improvement or change.
One of the tricks to the "can't partition" is rather simple - of course backup is step #1 and is spelled out - SHRINK the main HFS+ partition! then stretch it back to full length. Sometimes a reboot is needed, and sometimes even do a Safe Boot - not sure what but Recovry Mode might be a good option too. That does seem to consolidate free space, move files that are locked and cannot be moved otherwise, and allow BCA to partition, jusst be sure to have enough space left and large enough for a proper Windows install (and fudge factor).

Stuck in Lion installation *LIMBO* - disk damaged, disk wont repair, disk is locked, wont revert back to snow leopard

I'm stuck in Limbo. I cant complete the install and cant revert back to snow leopard. All I have are the installer utilites (including safari).
I'm running a summer 2009 release macbook pro 17 inch. I downloaded the Lion install app and proceeded to follow the instructions and guided. After less than a minute the install stopped to say that it could not be completed because the hard disk is damaged and can’t be repaired.
So...I went to disc utility to verify the disk and this is what I got.
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking file systemPerforming live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Incorrect number of file hard links
Bad hard link creation date
(It should be 3325742596 instead of 3340504404)
Hard link record has data extents (id = 2888169)
Checking multi-linked files.
The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
So I put in my Snow Leopard disk and went to repair disk. Now, THIS is what I got.
Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
So then I wanted to go back to Snow Leopard at least, but I cant. When I go to “Startup Disk” and select my Mac 10.6.8 drive, it says:
You can’t change the startup disk from the selected disk.
Startup Disk could not gather enough information on Selected Disk.
So that’s annoying because it keeps me stuck in that installation "limbo" - not able to finish installing and not able to go back.
I restarted, holding down the OPTION key, but it only gave me one boot selection - the installer itself.
So then I try yet again to install this thing because there’s not much else I can do...but now it won’t even start installing...when the installer screen asks which drive I want to install it on, for which I would of course choose my Macintosh HD, it says in subscript underneath Macintosh HD:
“This disk is locked” and it wont let me select the “continue” button to begin the installation.
Please help, someone.

phew, just got everything back to "normal"
I turned off my mac for about 10 minutes and then started it up again. Also I think this time i inserted my snow leopard disc at just the right time, not too early not too late.
Whatever it was, when i went to "Startup Disk" the snow leopard disc showed up!
So then I went to disk utility after booting the snow leopard installer for the first time. It said it repaired one thing but then stopped and said it couldnt repair it and told me to back up and reformat.
Then I just ran a simple verify again and it said the HD was "OK" - it gave me a clean bill of health?!?!
So then I went to startup disk again, and was finally able to get out of limbo and back to good old snow leopard.
Now I'll install Lion, but taking all cautions beforehand...maybe i'll wait a few days first though.
Thanks to everyone.

No startup disks in System Preferences

...only "Network startup" shows.
I was trying to install a firmware update via OS9 (or so I hoped) onto my pismo so that I could use migration assistant for my new mbp. I had a fw drive attached, with 4 partitions, along with the pismo's hd and its 2 partitions. From the fw drive, I selected an os9.2 system folder to boot from, and the pismo booted up into 9.2 as expected; after restart, the pismo came up in panther however, rather than os9.2. Only after starting up Classic from the fw drive did I get the message the update failed. Next, I copied over the system folder with os9.2 onto the pismo. please note, the os9.2 folder is from a backup of my wife's g4 iBook. When I opened system prefs hoping to select the just-copied system folder as the start up disk - I got nothing, just network startup. No other folders. I just ran applejack to repair permissions, but afterward, still nothing in startup disk.
What did I do, and how can I fix it? Any help appreciated.

Alright - I've run Disk Utility and repaired permissions and now Sys Prefs has found all the volumes on my drive.
At first nothing had changed when I looked in Sys Prefs, and I highlighted the Network icon assuming I could deselect it. I could not. I triple clicked in the space next to the Network icon, and sys prefs seemed to wake up and immediately scanned. I selected the volume I wanted, and closed the lock to prevent changes. I had not clicked in the space before running Disk Utility, so perhaps clicking was all I needed to do, but since the log from DU suggests permissions were repaired, I suspect it was necessary.
Here's the log from Disk Utility. If someone can translate this for me to let me know what was done, I'd be grateful. I assume the glitch was in the system library filesystems line:
Repairing permissions for “Steve's Computer”
Determining correct file permissions.
We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays. New permissions are 16893
We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./Library/ColorSync/Profiles. New permissions are 16893
We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./System/Library/Filesystems/cd9660.fs/cd9660.util. New permissions are 33261
We are using a special uid for the file or directory ./private/var/at/jobs. New uid is 1
We are using a special uid for the file or directory ./private/var/at/spool. New uid is 1
The privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume
Permissions repair complete

Changed startup disk and now iMac won't boot, even to CD, can't zap PRAM

So maybe I did something really bad, but I can't imagine that I've fried my logic board, right? I changed the startup disk to an external CD/DVD drive with a linux boot CD inserted. I rebooted the computer and got just a grey screen. I decided that this computer was not capable of booting from the linux CD. Forced the power off by holding down the power button. I turned the computer back on and removed the linux CD. Now my computer will not boot at all. I get a grey screen, then after a long period, the folder with a flashing question mark.
I tried booting to my system restore CD in order to switch the startup disk back to my internal HDD, but it will not boot to CD, even when holding the 'C' button. I disconnected the external drive after trying to boot from CD using the external or internal CD drive. I tried resetting the PRAM, but the computer will not do this. I noticed that perhaps the keyboard is not being powered because I can't turn CAPS LOCK on and get a green light.
What else could I possibly try before taking a trip to the genius store? I look forward to your ideas.

So get this. I replaced the original keyboard on this computer and was just informed that only the original kybd will work for system startup commands. Since I no longer have the original kybd, the only was to switch the boot drive is use the IR remote that came with the computer, by holding the 'menu' button and using FF and RED buttons to make selection.

I have Mac OS X, using boot camp i installed windows 7. installation was successful but when i try to select to boot back to mac os x via boot camp from Windows 7 control panel, its saying "You may not have privileges to change the startup disk..."

from the boot camp control panel, highlighted "Macintosh HD Mac OS X", click on Restart button or click OK or click Apply buttons gave me "An error occurred while trying to change the startup disk. You may not have privileges to change the startup disk. Make sure you have administrative privileges and try again."
Im logged in to Windows 7 as admin thou but still giving me the above message.
i rebooted & the option key does not give me option to boot to Mac instead gives me a screen with lock then below is a blank field then a right arrow on the right side, i normally hit the power button from this screen
please help
thx

sorry for digging up an old thread, but what was the problem?

Startup Disk Does Not Automatically Start on Boot

I have a problem booting my system. Everytime I boot or restart my macbook pro, it always shows a selection of what disk to use instead of directing to login page and it's annoying. I already set my startup disk on system preference but doesn't work. I also tried using disk utility and repair the disk and its permission and still didn't work. How can I fix this?

Angelo Suerte wrote:
I have a problem booting my system. Everytime I boot or restart my macbook pro, it always shows a selection of what disk to use instead of directing to login page and it's annoying. I already set my startup disk on system preference but doesn't work.
Did you lock the padlock?
I also tried using disk utility and repair the disk and its permission and still didn't work. How can I fix this?
Disconnect all devices from the computer then do the following:
Boot up from your Snow Leopard Install DVD while holding down the "c" key.
Select the language you wish to use, and then choose "Disk Utility" from the menu bar.
Your HD should appear in a panel on the left hand side of the window which opens. Select it and then click on the "repair disk" button in the right hand section of the window.
Once this process has been completed restart your computer and repair permissions directly from Disk Utility.
If Disk Utility is unable to complete the repair, you will need to use a stronger 3rd party utility like DiskWarrior, Techtool PRO (not Deluxe) or Drive Genius.

Mini telling me to delete files on startup disk

A screen started popping up last night telling me to close all my applications to create more space and that I needed to delete files off of my startup disk because it is too full. I'm not sure what files to delete, and/or, if I should even pay attention to this notice.... Help!
Also, I was only running Safari when the notice came up. It happened twice last night and once this morning.

If your computer is locking up and if you have been running out of room on your hard drive, you should make sure your hard drive has not suffered some corruption by running Utilities > DiskUtility and verifying the hard drive.
BTW you should try to keep 10% of your hard drive free space, for better performance. And if you can't do that, at least keep 2 Gigbytes or more free. (OSX gets very unhappy when it runs out of room -- and bad things start to happen.)

No startup disk on boot

Okay, this will be a long story and I hope some people would have the patience of reading everything. I just want to tell everything that may have contributed to my problem. My main problem is, when I start my iMac, it does not find any startup disk (not my Mac OS, and not my bootcamp partition).
It all started when I opened my iMac and got an error message, something about a missing/corrupt ntfs.sys file (I default Windows on startup, and I don't know why this appeared, I didn't convert my HD from FAT to NTFS because I don't even know how to do this). So I looked for it on the internet and most of the suggestions said that I should insert my Windows CD and boot from there, and choose Repair. Unfortunately that didn't work, so I booted from Mac instead (holding down the Option key on startup so that I can choose which partition/OS to start from). I successfully booted on Mac. While I was there, I changed the default disk to boot from to Mac (using Startup Disk). And somewhere in the lower left part of the screen, I saw a lock button that when enabled, it will prevent future changes (on what startup disk to start from I guess), so I locked it.
The next day when I started my Mac, it just showed a blinking folder with a question mark. Again, I searched for it on the internet and followed a thousand suggestions on how this might be fixed. These are the things I tried (not in order), and not one of them worked:
1. Safe Boot/Safe Mode - holding down the Shift key
2. Holding down the Option key - before, it showed my 2 available partitions (Mac and Bootcamp/Windows), but now I just get a blank white screen with my mouse pointer
3. Resetting the PRAM - I can tell that the reset worked because previously, I disabled the gong sound during startup, and after I resetted, the gong sound came back
4. fsck - fail. It fsck'd my Mac OS CD (see step 5)
5. Booting from Mac OS installation CD - although I successfully booted from this one, when I ran Disk Utilities, it only showed the CD and not the startup disks. I even tried reinstalling, but when I got to the part that says select which drive to install in, there were no options at all.
Basically I tried everything that I can find on the Internet, to no avail. I'm worried that this could be a hardware problem, although I still have my warranty. It has only been 7 months since I bought it...
Additional infos: I tried removing my USB keyboard and mouse but that didn't change anything, and I didn't add a memory card on it. I never opened my iMac ever.
HELP!

1. This might happen if it wasn't connected well to begin with, but given that you were already having problems with the drive, almost certainly isn't the case here.
2. Useless except as a paperweight. Any data stored on it and not backed up can only be recovered by a professional service.
(59298)

Startup Disk keeps changing

MacPro early 2008 Intel Quad OSX 10.6.7.
My startup disk keeps changing vicariously. I have selected the drive to startup from, lock it and at any given time/day it starts up with another drive. I have backup boot up disks that have been cloned with SuperDuper for safety purposes.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
Download this, or a similar tool if you prefer:
OmniDiskSweeper - Products - The Omni Group
Boot in safe mode. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
During startup, you will see "Safe Boot" on the login screen, which appears even if you normally log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Safe mode is slower than normal, and some things won’t work at all, possibly including wireless networking.
Does your boot volume continue to fill up? Use the above tool to explore the volume and find out where the space is going.

Can't write to external disk after cloning startup disk to it

After cloning my PowerBook Pro's startup disk to an external Thunderbolt drive, and temporarily using that drive to boot-up, the Thunderbolt drive is locked into Read Only mode. How do I enable it to write again? The INFO pane says the following: System privilege: "Read & Write"; wheel: "Read Only"; everyone: "Read Only". The basis for my cloning was to deal with a very full startup disk that I did a lot of video editing on (very processor intensive). The disk had become fragmented to the point that it couldn't access sectors fast enough for editing, so I cloned it over to a G-Tech Thunderbolt drive (using Carbon Copy Cloner), reformatted the MacBook startup disk, then reverse-cloned the copied files back over from the Thunderbolt, the idea being that they'd be re-written nice 'n neat in unfragmented order into their proper sectors. I then ceased booting-up from Thunderbolt, but now the system seems to think that Thunderbolt is still special in some way like a gossling bonded to a surrogate human mother, and it won't let me write to it. Can anybody help me with this?

Have you verified and if necessary, repaired the disk(s) using Disk Utility on your Mac?

No startup Disk to select

Hi,
I have a Macbook retina13, I installed Yosemite-BAD CHOICE.I decided to restore to Mavericks using cmdR and selecting time machine. After several failures,the startup disk doesnt show up anymore.I cant even reinstall Yosemite because recovery HD is locked.

Hi,
there seems to be some light in the end of the tunnel.
I took the Mac to a service center, they say that all the data has been lost and my only option is to reinstall os. They asked for a whopping 60euros for one hour's work. Might be worth it, but I still have faith in experts like yourselves prior to turning my mac in.
The situation is as follows:
- pressing option upon restart takes me to a screen that offers the recovery HD but doesn't allow me to choose it - saying it's locked.
- Going to the recovery options, none see to find the startup disk
- I created a Mavericks usb flash drive, installed the system (on the flash drive). now the machine is booting from it, slow and all, but it has injected some life. The internal HD is nowhere to be found, except in Disk Utilities. In disk utilities I can see the original (internal) HD with no partitions. In the options, I can read info, verify and repair - although the machine claims there is nothing to be repaired and the disk is OK. In the partition menu, I am not allowed to amend anything.
I would really appreciate your help on this, I await a response

Startup Disk is Locked?

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