[geeks] MacBook5,1 problems

[Rick Hamell]

It can be any one of a dozen different problems. From possible HD 
corruption, Permission issues, to full caches if OSX's cleanup processes 
aren't running or are failing. It can also be a fragmented hard drive, 
and once it was a corrupted file in the ~/user directory. Yes, I know 
OSX isn't supposed to get fragmented, but Symantec (makes Norton Disk 
Doctor) claims it does and used to have a fairly convincing article with 
technical reasons why it happened.

Either way, I saw this exact issue hundreds of times supporting OS X at 
a Fortune 500. Many of my techs insisted on wasting days 
troubleshooting, including calls to various Apple Engineers and bug 
reports with no real resolution. 10.5 was really bad for some reason, 
and it seems that 10.9 maybe just as bad. My typical procedure was:

- Disk Utility, run twice. If problems are found, run third time
- Onyx, run twice (free tool, highly recommend for every Mac user)
- Test to see if problem goes away.
- Norton Disk Doctor - check all boxes, let run.
- Tech Tools - let it autotest, then fix everything.

I had roughly a 50%, 75%, 80%, 90% chance of success using this method. 
NDD and Tech Tools aren't expensive products, but if it's still a 
problem after Disk Utility and Onyx it's usually more time efficient to 
nuke and reinstall as Tech Tools can easily take 6-8 hours by itself 
because you have to boot off a CD/USB drive for it to actually fix 
anything. Disk Utility and OnyX both go quick enough that it's worth the 
detour.

Rick


On 11/22/14, 3:26 PM, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> I'll give them a shot, what do you think that would do? Are you thinking
> bit-rot or corruption on the HD?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Lionel
>
>> On Nov 22, 2014, at 4:18 PM, Rick Hamell <hamellr at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Try running Disk Utility and OnyX on it before you go that far.
> _______________________________________________
> GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks

-- 

Thank you very much!
Rick Hamell

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