SOS!!! Mac tiger OS startup problems.....

[ajampam]

GUys,
I was watching a movie last night...the final credits were on and I wanted to minimize the window and surf the web. The top left hand corner was my hotcorner for dashboard and I accidentally started up dashboard and that was it....my mac completely stopped responding.....so I shut it down by pressing down on the power button. NOw when I try starting up, I see the gray apple with the spinning wheel and then the MAc OSX startup thingy and then A BLUE SCREEN!!!! I tried disk utility, the disk was fine, ran the hardware test, they all turned up fine too.....now I need your help. I did not want to reinstall the mac os just yet, as I was not sure what would happen to my data....and some thrid party apps that are very precious.....any feedback will be highly appreciated!

Thanks....

 

[cubist]

I suppose this is the auto-login trying to restore the system to the way it was... You could try booting the x cd and disabling the autologin, and logging in as a different name... I always create a couple of additional user accounts in case I need to do things. One time the main user had a messed-up file which was causing all the colors to be bad. Ended up deleting some files, I believe of type .plist... sorry I'm not much help, but I was attacted to your thread because you mentioned SOS, which was the Apple III operating system IIRC.

 

[Duff-Man]

Duff-Man says....I would try a utility like Diskwarrior - it fixes a lot that Disk utility doesn't and it's a pretty wise investment for your utility box.

If it comes down to a reinstall however, if you boot from your OS X cd and do an "archive and install" you will not lose any programs or data.....oh yeah!

 

[ajampam]

Thanks a lot for all the help guys....I finally alled up the applecare guys when I got back from work, restarted in safe mode and restarted back in the normal mode....it is back to normal now....seems like it was a login problem.....alls well that ends well!!!!!

 

[ajampam]

If it comes down to a reinstall however, if you boot from your OS X cd and do an "archive and install" you will not lose any programs or data.....oh yeah!

That is real useful info....will keep that in mind for future reference....thanks!