MP 6,1 Destroyed Finder on 6,1 or Hardware?

[rickwtexas]

2013 6,1 Mac Pro (Monterey OS) was running perfectly last week, and then over the course of 2-3 hours it completely flaked out. First file permissions changed and I couldn't move or delete files, open folders, etc on the desktop. Next Illustrator/Photoshop couldn't access the Preferences Folders.

Ran disk utility and then tried to change permissions but the OS said I didn't have sufficient privileges, so I was READ ONLY on ADMIN and USERS. So I created a new admin, restarted, same thing. Performed the recommended Monterey OS X update, restarted and then it was much worse. It now takes nearly 10 minutes for the mac to show the desktop after a restart and the finder is constantly unresponsive. Most of the time it never shows the HD or the files on the desktop unless I do several force quits of the finder. Can't boot into safe mode. Used Terminal to delete FINDER PREFERENCES and no change. Booted into recovery mode and "reinstalled" Monterey 3 times, but each time I come back with the exact same thing. Also booted into recovery mode and ran disk utility on every container shown on the SSD but no luck (but disk utility also DIDN'T find any problems). I fear that my issue is going to be hardware. Tomorrow I'll try creating a boot USB and erase HD - any ideas before I do that? Help, this is my work computer. Thanks in advance.

 

[flaubert]

Your symptoms do present as though the SSD is failing. I would hope that you have a good backup protocol; if you have a backup from just before things went crazy don't overwrite it now. Make a fresh backup on completely separate media of the current craziness, just in case you need it later. Also, Time Machine is notorious for silently failing; if you've been relying on it as your sole backup this is a crucial time to do a clone backup using Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.

 

[flaubert]

Once you have done what you can to preserve your data, then I would recommend getting set up to boot from a separate hard drive with a fresh install of Monterey. I'm not super familiar with the 6,1 Mac Pro, but I'm pretty sure that you can still boot from USB on your hardware. Once you have that set up and proven to be working as intended (i.e. Finder works, etc), then from that point (booted from the new good install) you can start to check out your original SSD.

You might want to check out DxDrive, a utility for diagnosing hard disks and SSDs.

 

[rickwtexas]

I don't store any files on my mac, I copy all my work daily to an external SSD, so all i will lose is one half day of work. I'll try DxDrive before buying a new SSD. I did buy this Macpro for $250, so I expected it might have an issue - but it worked great for 4 months at least. Thanks all.

 

[rickwtexas]

I ran the built-in Apple hardware diagnostic last night and it didn't find an issue. I couldn't run DxDrive because I could never get a download started (I'll use a mac from the office to download it to a usb). Haven't seen an issue this bad since the 1990's. The oddest thing, Photoshop will open and run perfectly, every other app has issues and won't save files, even UPLOAD in dropbox won't operate, but PSD had no problems. And this morning - 2nd monitor went out and my 2010 Mac Pro (backup work computer) has decided that USB ports should be shut off. Maybe it's the ghost of Jobs.

 

[rickwtexas]

Followup: Gave up and erased internal HD and started over. But even after that I'm sort of back where I was. HD: System is Read & write, admin and everyone is read only - no apps can save preferences and after a restart (like power going out) I'm back to setting up App preferences. No amount of trying to change permissions will do anything.

I've tried unlocking from lower level folders "upward", using Terminal and chmod 755 and dragging folders in various orders, creating a new admin, no luck. Ideas?

 

[tsialex]

DriveDX server issues are solved, you can download it again, just tested:

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.

binaryfruit.com

 

[flat4]

Running DriveDX on a iMac that is using OCLP, have 13.3.1 and when it opens it crashes. Not sure if its because its running on OCLP or I just need to uninstall and reinstall

------------------------------------- Translated Report (Full Report Below) ------------------------------------- Process: DriveDx [6893] Path: /Applications/DriveDx.app/Contents/MacOS/DriveDx Identifier: com.binaryfruit.DriveDx Version: 1.11.0 (730) Code Type: X86-64 (Native) Parent Process: launchd [1] User ID: 502 Date/Time: 2023-04-18 11:22:39.4474 -0500 OS Version: macOS 13.3.1 (22E261) Report Version: 12 Anonymous UUID: A2FA1566-E094-E083-D888-9FF22A2712F1 Time Awake Since Boot: 40000 seconds System Integrity Protection: enabled Crashed Thread: 6 TaskProcessorThread Exception Type: EXC_GUARD (SIGKILL) Exception Codes: GUARD_TYPE_MACH_PORT Exception Codes: 0x0000000000014407, 0x0000000000000000 Termination Reason: Namespace GUARD, Code 2305845208237032455

 

[goMac]

Followup: Gave up and erased internal HD and started over. But even after that I'm sort of back where I was. HD: System is Read & write, admin and everyone is read only - no apps can save preferences and after a restart (like power going out) I'm back to setting up App preferences.

Those are the correct permissions for System.

Applications write preferences into your home folder -> Library (which is hidden by default). Not System.