Friday, November 28, 2008
Mac Pro Nightmare: kernel panics on startup.
Friday, November 28, 2008 
A note: this is ongoing.
I noticed a few days ago that I didn't have an option for a translucent menu bar anymore in Leopard. Hmm. I thought maybe I did some command-line thing in the past to remove it, so I searched online and found an application that said it restored it.
I ran it and it erred at the end of the process, stating some error about not having root access or something. I launched System Preferences - and it wouldn't open. Hmm. Not good. I then read in a forum thread before restarting the system that the application hosed someone else's Mac.
Oh crap.
I restarted. At the grey screen, a slow grey shade came down and kernel panic. Restart, again. Every boot results in a kernel panic. I didn't change hardware or anything - this app did something terrible to my Mac.
I tried to boot from the Leopard DVD... nope... a panic before it got to do it.
I put the Mac Pro into target disk mode & used a Firewire cable to have my wife's Macbook see it as a drive. It saw the Leopard DVD too... so I installed Leopard on the Mac Pro from it's own superdrive to it's hard drive. It took forever... because the disk was in the Mac Pro itself and not in the Macbook. Afterwards Leopard on the Mac Pro showed on my wife's laptop... so I was running OS X on the Mac Pro on the laptop and it booted and I could see the desktop and everything. Strange.
Rebooted, same damn thing. I tried safe boot mode and fsck... said it repaired stuff... rebooted, same thing.
I just ran Disk Utility on the drive in TDM, and it gave me this:
Verify and Repair volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Incorrect block count for file pcscd.pub
(It should be 16 instead of 17)
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Repairing volume.
Rechecking volume.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Macintosh HD was repaired successfully.
We'll see what happens. I think I'll zap PRAM right now. Cross your fingers.
Three chimes. Restarting... seeing dusting of pixels on the grey screen... got to blue screen after grey - kernel panic. CRAP.
Gonna try to reinstall OS X on the Mac Pro in TDB from the Macbook again. This could be hardware maybe?
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