Intel core duo iMac reinstall / restore

You'll have to give us more information. What version OS X and what exact model.
What problems are you having? What errors are you getting?
 
Hi, I sent a 200 word+ explanation but that seems to have been lost! I shall try again! But firstly, to answer your questions;

iMac (8,1)
intel Core 2 Duo 3.06 Ghz
4GB RAM
Boot ROM Version IM81.00C1.B00

ICH8-M AHCI 465.76GB ATA

The problem:
black curtain of doom descended on start up - "panic" message about not finding driver or something and instruction to restart computer. Did this a dozen or so times .....

have since atempted;
reinstall from disk, restore from time machine back up from external drive. Have performed 7-pass erasure of HD plus reinstall / restore as above - both of which failed. Have just tried partitioning HD, erassing unused space, and reinstall / restore - which also failed. First aid verify and repair utility run on 2nd partition has following;
"invalid node structure and invalid record count" and fails to verify or repair.
When I erase this partition and verify it says "Volume bit map needs minor repair" it then repairs ok but as soon as I run the install disk or try to restore from time machine from an external drive, it fails! It has taken me since Thursday evening to get this far and am running out of ideas / patience!
Hope you can help
ps have copied this as original message didn't reach you intact, hooray I have an iPhone to be able to try and sort this out! Many thanks.
 
I assume you have been using Disk Utility to repair the drive. Do you have Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro ? When Disk Utility fails to correct problems, a third party utility usually can.
In my experience with those errors, the drive is failing and you will need to replace it.
 
I personally have not used Drive Genius, but if you have and like the results, give it a try.
 
I'd say your HD is dying or else you have a bad RAM chip screwing things up. Try running one RAM chip at a time and just try a fresh install. If it crashes with either chip look into a new HD. You could run Apple hardware test from the original installers for the machine by inserting the disk and holding the D key at startup to test the RAM and HD for failures.
 
Thanks. Ran the short hardware test before anything else and it tested ok but having got knowhere I'll try the extended test option. If it is a hard drive failure that's not very good, the machine is less than two years old and apart from systems and applications, everything else is stored on three seperate 1TB external drives, so it's not had a hard life compared to some! Will see if extended test shows anything. Cheers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top