Stuck at "starting login window" and Disk Utility won't fix it...

I downloaded some security updates, and since restarting my computer as required, I have never been able to start it up since. It gets stuck on the "starting login window" screen, with the little blue bar still shimmering and mouse still moving, but just won't ever load the login screen, even after hours.
I've seen a few other people have had this problem, and tried to follow some of the recommendations, with no joy. I tried several times to repair the disk permissions with Disk Utility, but it has an internal error saying it lost the connection to the disk manager, or something similar.... when I try to repair the disk, it fails saying something about "overlapped extent allocations" and an "invalid node structure".
I can start up in single-user mode, and doing a fsck had the same result.
What can I do??? Some people suggested an Archive and Install manoeuvre, but I'm scared of losing all my files! Will it erase them all? Do I have to back up all my files before doing this? How can I back them up if my computer won't start?
I know almost nothing about computers - all I know I have found in the past few days searching through these discussion boards trying to find an answer! I have an important essay due on Monday which is stuck in my computer, so I'm a little scared!
I'm using Mac OS X Panther or something.... not sure how to find out exactly which one, as my computer won't start!
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
iBook G4

Hi, you have some serious directory damage there, and it was probably there before the updates. An Archive and Install would not be recommended. If you did that you would likely have more problems then you have right now.
If it were me I'd run Diskwarrior and Tech Tool Pro on it. DW for the invalid node structure and Tech Tool Pro for the Overlapped Extent Allocation. But you probably would have to buy both of them, and there's no guarantee either one will fix it.
Apple doc.#25770, talking about Overlap..... says the easiest way to fix it is to Erase and Install. If you are running 10.3.9 and had access to a retail Tiger disk, you could try booting up on it and running Disk Utility. Tigers DU has the ability to fix Overlap.... sometimes, Panther's does'nt.
This is the best way to Erase and Install. First backup all your important stuff, if you can, as the following will erase everything on your drive; it will be unrecoverable. Put your install disk in your Mac and Restart while holding down the C key. In Tiger, When you get to the install screen, don't click install and go to the title bar at the top of the screen and click on Utilities (in earlier OS's click on the installer menu).
Click on Disk Utility and choose the hard drive you want your OS on. Then click on the Erase tab. In Tiger, click on the Security Options button near the bottom (it's similiar for Panther and Jaguar).
Once in there choose Zero Out Data (write zero's in earlier versions). This will map out any bad blocks on your drive and bring it back to almost new condition (providing there's nothing wrong mechanically with it, bad bearings, defective or damaged surface, etc.).
Once this is done, go back to the install screen and begin the "Erase and Install" installation. This will put a factory fresh system on a clean hard drive.
Cheers!
DALE

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Hello buhrow:
That makes two of us that go back to the beginning of time and have never seen anything like that. Have you run the fontbook applications to eliminate duplicates and check for corrupt fonts? Offhand, I cannot understand why just having a program open would prevent other programs from crashing.
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Message was edited by: Barry Hemphill (spelling, no checker)

My White Macbook is stuck at the loading screen, and disk utility, safe mode doesn't work either. What should I do?

I went on vacation a few days ago and in El Salvador, they have this mobile broadband sticks. Well, I was using one until it gave me a network error. After that, it shut down my computer entirely. The first time it happened, I didn't think much of it. I took the battery out and put it back in for it could work. It happened another two times, and after the third time, my MacBook stays stuck at the loading screen, and it will take 5-10 minutes on that screen, before it shuts down, or it wouldn't turn on at all. I've tried booting into safe mode, but it appears to not boot into it. I've tried resetting the Pram, and using disk utility, but that still won't work. I don't know what else to do to make it boot into OS X Lion.
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Reinstalling Lion Without the Installer
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alterhatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

Upgraded to 10.5.6 and Disk Utility won't repair?

I upgraded to 10.5.6 and ran Disk Utility and got the report below. Should I be concerned about it?:
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/afpLoad" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/bin/setregion" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Versions/A/Resources/runner " has been modified and will not be repaired.
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Group differs on "private/etc/cups", should be 0, group is 26.
Permissions differ on "private/var/spool/cups/cache/rss", should be drwxr-xr-x , they are drwxrwxr-x .
Permissions repair complete

No. TM backups are not usable to downgrade to an earlier version of OS X. Archive and Install is the proper method.
How to Perform an Archive and Install
An Archive and Install will NOT erase your hard drive, but you must have sufficient free space for a second OS X installation which could be from 3-9 GBs depending upon the version of OS X and selected installation options. The free space requirement is over and above normal free space requirements which should be at least 6-10 GBs. Read all the linked references carefully before proceeding.
1. Be sure to use Disk Utility first to repair the disk before performing the Archive and Install.
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
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.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer.
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3. Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When you reach the screen to select a destination drive click once on the destination drive then click on the Option button. Select the Archive and Install option. You have an option to preserve users and network preferences. Only select this option if you are sure you have no corrupted files in your user accounts. Otherwise leave this option unchecked. Click on the OK button and continue with the OS X Installation.
4. Upon completion of the Archive and Install you will have a Previous System Folder in the root directory. You should retain the PSF until you are sure you do not need to manually transfer any items from the PSF to your newly installed system.
5. After moving any items you want to keep from the PSF you should delete it. You can back it up if you prefer, but you must delete it from the hard drive.
6. You can now download a Combo Updater directly from Apple's download site to update your new system to the desired version as well as install any security or other updates. You can also do this using Software Update.

G4 Dual 1.43 Ghtz won't boot and disk utility won't repair it

I can't get the Boot Disk Disk Utility to repair the drive on my old G4 Dual 1.43 and desparately need the Documents file and home folders. Any ideas ?

This isn't going to be easy.
Does disk utility try to repair the drive? If it mounts, you could try the software I list below.
You either goint to have to get an external firewire drive & install some mac os on it. Then run some utilities from this drive or you going to have to get the drive out and mount in an external enclosure & run utilities.
There our commercial places that recover data. They will not be cheap.
I do not know what type of drive you have in the machine. So before buying an empty enclosure check.
Has everything interface:
FireWire 800/400 + USB2, + eSATA 'Quad Interface'
save a little money interface:
FireWire 400 + USB 2.0
This web page lists both external harddrive types. You may need to scroll to the right to see both.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
The latest the hard drive enclosures support the newer serial ata drives. The drive and closure that I list supports only older parallel ata.
Here is an external hd enclosure.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW91UAL1K/
Perhaps Disk Warrior will be of some help:
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
"Stellar Phoenix Macintosh - Mac data recovery software, recovers data from damaged, deleted, or corrupted volumes and even from initialized disks."
They have a trial version, so I guess you can see if your data can be recovered...
http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-data-recovery.htm
"Data Rescue II is the best data recovery software on the market for recovering files from a problem hard drive. Data Rescue II works when other tools fail. Data Rescue II is also completely safe to use since it does not attempt any risky repairs to the drive while its scanning."
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
FileSalvage is an extremely powerful Macintosh application for exploring and recovering deleted files from a drive or volume. FileSalvage is designed to restore files that have:
-- been accidentally deleted.
-- become unreadable due to media faults.
-- been stored on a drive before it was re-initialized/formatted.
http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id= 1
"TestDisk is a free data recovery utility. It was primarily designed to help recover lost data storage partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally erasing a partition table)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk
"*Hard drive data recovery and warranty implications*
Hard drives that have become non-functional through normal use, and have had data recovery performed on them by DriveSavers or Ontrack Data Recovery can be returned to Apple for warranty service. This includes products covered by the AppleCare Protection Plan. The cost of any data recovery attempts is not covered by the Apple Limited Warranty."
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3974?viewlocale=en_US
Entering:
mac data recovery
into Google will list some firms who specialize in recovering data. Data recovery isn't cheap.
Examples:
1) Ontrack Data Recovery is the world leader in data recovery services and data recovery software offering the fastest, most convenient and cost-effective solutions to clients who have experienced data loss.
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/
2) Enter the world of DriveSavers Data Recovery…
    * Data Recovery Tools
    * Data Recovery Process
    * Data Recovery Cleanroom
http://www.drivesavers.com/

Help! PB G4 won't boot and Disk Utility can't fix it!

I have an insufficiently backed up PowerBook G4 1.67MHz (1GB RAM) that suddenly nosedived last night. I was surfing the Web and OmniWeb froze up. I couldn't force-quit it because the Finder was also locked up. So I held the power button until it shut down. When I restarted it, it got to the grey apple screen and hung there. I booted off the Tiger CD and ran Disk Utility, but it couldn't fix it. Then I tried booting into single-user mode and it also failed. Finally I tried reinstalling the system, but the CD couldn't find the hard drive. Aaargh!
I have a bunch of documents that I really cannot lose, and the most updated versions of them are only on this drive. Anyone know any tricks or third-party utilities that can help? I have another Mac; would Firewire Target Mode or Network booting help?
Some details:
Here's what Disk Utility said:
Invalid volume header (this was written in red)
Checking Catalog file
Keys out of order (in red)
Rebuilding Catalog B-tree (in green)
The volume [name] could not be repaired (in red)
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (in bold red)
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error (in bold red)
Repair attempted on one volume (in bold)
1 volume could not be repaired (in bold red)
Then it popped up a dialog box:
First Aid Failed
Disk Utility stopped repairing [name] because the following error was encountered:
The underlying task reported failure on exit (in bold)
Here's what single-user said:
It all booted normally, then I got these ominous entries in the list:
disk0s3: I/O error.
jnl: dojnlio: strategy err 0x5
jnl: open: could not read 512 bytes for the journal header.
hfs: late jnl init: failed to open/create the journal (retval 8).
nfs_boot: networking is not initialized
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x001F2634): nfsbootinit failed with 6
[then there's two backtraces here]
panic: We are hanging here...
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

As Mr Peck advised, DW is your best chance of getting out of this.
The important point of your post is the hard shut down (were you running Classic?) and the mention of Keys Out of Order. Do a search on these boards for Keys Out of Order for a quick education of the problem.
Make sure of the version of DW you use, get the disk and don't download, and make sure of your firmware version.
Joe

'volume check failed', and disk utility can't fix it

I was planning to create a new bootable backup today and ran 'repair disk' from an install disk before cloning.
Unfortunately I grabbed a Panther disk by mistake, and only discovered it was the wrong disk as I took it out. By then, DU had run through the 'repair' - changing quite a few things - until it showed 'volume cannot be repaired'.
I've tried to correct them using DU from the Tiger install disk, but without any luck. DU shows:
+Invalid catalogue record type+
+Volume check failed+
+Error: the underlying task reported failure on exit+
+1 Volume could not be repaired because of an error+
My iBook still appears to be running perfectly, but obviously I need to repair the disk before I can clone it. Disk Utility can't do it - could DiskWarrior?
I'd really appreciate some advice on the options open to me, and the best way to do it.

Success!
I powered down and ran DiskWarrior a 2nd time to rebuild the directory. This time I skipped the recommended Preview stage and went straight to confirming Rebuild. Everything now seems to be fine again. DU finds no faults with the disk, and the iBook feels significantly quicker and snappier.
Two things I learnt that might be helpful - the first is, it's easy to be careless for just a moment and end up in a time-consuming mess. It's the first time I've done it, and I won't be doing it again.
Second thing is, when people say DiskWarrior is slow to boot, they mean it - it took at least 10 minutes to show up on screen, which is unsettling. And the Preview stage, for me, was equally unnerving.
Still, it worked - superbly - all my data is intact, the iBook is overhauled and working faster than ever.

Disk read error, and Disk Utility won't open

Have a PowerMac G4 dual 800mhz, with two hard drives. Mac OS X 10.3.9 is installed on HD1. I use HD2 for miscellaneous files.
Using the Azureus bittorrent client, I'm getting "Error: Disk read error - Input/output error, read fails" in the Status column when trying to download something to HD2.
However, I'm able to upload files from HD2 for other users, and I'm also able to play video files that are stored on HD2 without problem.
The real issue is that when I went to see if I could fix anything by opening Disk Utility, it won't open. It goes into an immediate state of Not Responding. It won't listen to me when I tell it to Force Quit... I have to wait a long time, or restart the computer, to get it to stop showing up in the dock.
Any advice would be appreciated.

To repair a startup volume you must do the following:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. Then select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now shutdown the computer for a couple of minutes and then restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger) and/or TechTool Pro (4.5.2 for Tiger) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
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Disk Utility won't start up in 10.5.3

I have been unable to open up my Disk Utility at all. I was able to do so earlier, perhaps with 10.5.0 while I was mounting my external hard drive. Now, I cannot mount the hard drive, and therefore cannot use Time Machine all because DIsk Utility won't open. I've diagnosed my hardware with "Disk 1" and found no problem. And, I've reinstalled the operating system. Any ideas?

Chris:
I just had the same issue on my son's MacBook. As long as you have a wired keyboard, the following will work.
1. Shut down the computer if it is on.
2. Press the power button to start the computer.
3. Immediately press and hold the Command (Apple) key and the "s" key for single-user mode.
4. Type mount -uw / (then press the Return Key) wait for next line to appear with # root/
(there is a space between t and - and another space between w and /)
5. Then Type "passwd" (without quotation marks then press the Return Key)
6. Enter new password (this will be for the root user account) (watch your fingers when you type because it doesn't show what you are typing, then hit the Return Key after you type it.
It will prompt you to retype the new password again, so retype it again and then hit the Return Key) wait for next line to appear...
7. Then Type "reboot" (without the quotes and hit the Return Key)
after the computer restarts and comes up with the login window....
8. Login with any of your usernames just to get the desktop up.
9. After desktop comes up choose System Preferences, then choose accounts. Unlock if you have to and using the username: root ..... and the password you just setup in the single user mode You now should be able to make users including your existing user account an admin.
After you log back in under your real account, it is advisable to deactivate the root user account. To do this,
1. Click the Finder icon in the Dock.
2. From the Go menu, choose Utilities.
3. Open Directory Utility.
4. Click the lock in the Directory Utility window if you need to unlock the utility.
5. Enter an administrator account name and password, then click OK.
6. Choose Disable Root User from the Edit menu.
Hope this helps.
David

Disk image mounting and disk utility oddities on Xserve running OS X Server

I continue to run into an odd problem on one of my server setups. It is a 1.33 GHZ Xserve running OS X Server 10.4.11. There are four ATA drive installed (two of which are mirrored using Softraid 3.6.6). There are a total of 6 Firewire drives on the Firewire 800 Bus. Three of those are used for sharing out files and the other three are for various backups.
What happens is that I sometimes run into an issue where dmg files will not mount. There are no error messages and nothing in the log, they just don't open. Likewise I am unable to launch Disk Utility, it just spins and spins never displaying the drives, again nothing in the logs, no crashreporter. I have also found out that the same thing happens in System Profiler when I try to get a list of drives on either the ATA bus or the Firewire bus. Mind you they all show up on the desktop. Likewise I have had no luck getting them to list or run permissions or the like from the diskutil commandline. Now I am able to mount actual drives. When I swap out the offsite backup drive it mounts the new drive just fine. However... when I eject the drive and it has disappeared from the desktop and then I remove it... I get the removal error.. you didn't put the drive away properly message.
Now there are no disk related events showing up anywhere in the logs. The only other oddity that I can see is that my rsync backups tend to generate a ton of zombie processes. I get zombies of cron, sh, rsync, and mail.
It is just a pretty straightforward shell script
/usr/local/bin/rsync -E --archive -eahfs --delete /Volumes/Files/Shared\ Items/ /Volumes/Backup\ Files/Shared\ Items/
Running in cron with it set to email the logs.
Now this does all clear up when I reboot the server... but it also doesn't reboot cleanly. It closes down all of the applications, login window and the like and then hangs on the shut down portion. Eventually I have to power it off manually. I've done the normal Volume checking on the main drives and they come up with 0 errors.
Hoping someone might have some ideas before I end up having to backup and reinstall the whole thing.

Also when I try to open the disk image file I get the following error in the log.
xserve kernel[0]: disk10s10: media is not present.

Ipod shuffle 3 : impossible to detect it on mac (finder, itunes and disk utility)

Hi,
ipod shuffle 3 : impossible to detect it on mac (finder, itunes and disk utility), but it works, I can listen music. Do you have a solution for me ?
the same on windows... no détection on plug
thanks
Fred

Does it still charge when connected? You said it still works with headphones.
It's possible that the connection port (the headphone jack) on the shuffle has become faulty. It has different connection points, so it's possible for it to work for headphones (and charging), but not for data. It's also possible that the USB cable is bad, if you have only one and no alternate way to test it and confirm it's working.
However, you can try these other things. Shut down the Mac and disconnect all USB peripheral devices, including any hub. Use this procedure to reset the shuffle
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1655
Start up Mac with nothing connected, except for standard keyboard and mouse (for a Desktop Mac). Connect the shuffle to a direct USB port. Check with iTunes, Finder, and Disk Utility to see if there is any improvement.
If that works better, experiment with connecting other USB device, to see if there was some type of USB conflict, or maybe overloading of USB bus (for power).

Software Update and Disk Utility no longer work (Leopard)

Hello. After upgrading yesterday from 10.4.11 to 10.5.0 then updating to 10.5.1 I find that repair / verify permissions no longer works (it just hangs after starting).
And the same with Software Update, it starts the check then just hangs. Grateful for any ideas!
Overall I am finding Leopard much slower in operation than Tiger. Peter

Create a new admin account with Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Accounts and see if the issue duplicates itself logging into that account. That will say if the issue systemwide, or just localized to the a bad user cache file. If the issue persists in the new user, you can try looking in the System -> Library and Library -> Cache, Applications Support, and ByHost folders for cache files relating to Software Update and Disk Utility. Once you find them, carefully extract them to comparable folders on your desktop you create (i.e. name one systemlibrarycache) so you know where you go them from, and restart your Mac. If the issues go away after two restarts then it is just one set of bad cache files. If the issues return after two restarts, you have something generating bad cache files which needs a more system wide repair tool.

Problems running Software Update and Disk Utility

I had automatic updating turned on in the Software Updates control panel, so I believe the system tried to apply the 10.4.6 automatically and somehow failed.
Ever since, when I try to run Software Update it hangs while trying to connect to the internet to get the list of available updates. I tried downloading the installer directly from Apple, but when I try to select a volume on which to install the update, it doesn't list my hard drive.
Finally, when trying to run the Disk Utility, I get an error about how the Disk Utility cannot be started because a background process is not running. I have to Force Quit to exit out of the Utility.
I was able to boot off the Mac OS X 10.4 installation DVD at which point I repaired the permissions and repaired the disk. However, upon restart the same problems remain.
I've seen several other people post about this issue; has anyone found a resolution OTHER than doing an Archive and Install (which I don't want to do if I don't have to?)
Thanks so much for help that anyone can provide!
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Create a new admin account with Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Accounts and see if the issue duplicates itself logging into that account. That will say if the issue systemwide, or just localized to the a bad user cache file. If the issue persists in the new user, you can try looking in the System -> Library and Library -> Cache, Applications Support, and ByHost folders for cache files relating to Software Update and Disk Utility. Once you find them, carefully extract them to comparable folders on your desktop you create (i.e. name one systemlibrarycache) so you know where you go them from, and restart your Mac. If the issues go away after two restarts then it is just one set of bad cache files. If the issues return after two restarts, you have something generating bad cache files which needs a more system wide repair tool.

Cany you help me with Installation and Disk Utility questions?

Greetings.
I'm just learning this stuff, so your responses in basic terminology would be appreciated. (Instruct me as you would my grandson). I have two questions.
First, I bought a used dual 450 from a friend, and, as I do not have the disks or license for the OS, I decided to make it legal by purchasing, registering, and installing new Panther DVDs. As I have been running 10.3.9 and the new disks are labeled eMac 10.3.3, is there anything I should or should not do in the process of installing the new disks? Do I need to install 10.3.3 and then download the 10.3.9 update? Will I lose anything in the process? I assume the eMac disks will work OK on a G4 tower.
Second, After power failures (common where I live), when I re-start the computer, it won't progress beyond the spinning spoke thing (I don't know what it's called), so I have to shut the computer down, and, after one or two more attempts to start up, it seems to start up OK.
I was told that, after a situation like this, I should start up with the install disk and run Disk Utility to repair the start-up disk.
The problem is that when I attempted to do this with the new DVD (again, I have not installed the OS from the DVD yet), the computer started up fine, but Disk Utility ran for a minute or so, then gave me the following message: "Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility." This happened twice in succession. I quit Disk Utility (although it warned me that I could rended the disk inoperable). The disk seems OK, but I don't know what the problem is with DIsk Utility, or what to do.
Thanks for your help.
G4 Dual 450 Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1 GB RAM

The problem is that when I attempted to do this with
the new DVD (again, I have not installed the OS from
the DVD yet), the computer started up fine, but Disk
Utility ran for a minute or so, then gave me the
following message: "Disk Utility has lost its
connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot
continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility."
This happened twice in succession. I quit Disk
Utility (although it warned me that I could rended
the disk inoperable). The disk seems OK, but I don't
know what the problem is with DIsk Utility, or what
to do.
Hi Jerry:
Getting back to the problem you're having with Disk Utility, a number of people have encountered this following an update to iTunes. If I understand correctly, when you bought the G4 it came with Panther installed, which your friend had updated to 10.3.9.
In an earlier post, Kappy posted the most succinct work-around I have found for this error:
1. Navigate to the /Library/Receipts/ folder.
2. Locate the iTunes.pkg and iTunesX.pkg files and move them to the Desktop.
3. Run Disk Utility and repair permissions.
4. Move the .pkg files back into the /Library/Receipts/ folder.
Give it a try and let us know how it works. As for your installation DVD, I have to concur with the others who have posted: it's meant specifically for one model of the eMac. It may work on another mac, but odds are it'll be problematic.
Andrew

Stuck at "starting login window" and Disk Utility won't fix it...

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