HeySage

Well, yesterday disaster struck. I was typing some obscure key combinations in sequence and my trusty powerbook froze on me. So what did I do? First, I tried ⌘⌥⎋ to force quit any applications that had crashed. This was to no avail. After over ten minutes (I was busy doing other things, like, seeing patients) I reset my powerbook (hold down the power book for 10 seconds).

When I tried to reboot, the computer locked up at the stage of loading quicksilver (set to launch on login). So the next step was to boot while holding ⇧ to stop applications from loading. Again non luck.

My next step was to zap the PRAM by holding ⌘⌥PR on boot (You will hear a second chime). Finally, it was time to enter single user mode (boot holding ⌘S while booting). In single user mode I did an FSCK (file system check) and repaired permissions by typing the following (⌅ = enter):

/sbin/fsck -y &#x2305;        
/sbin/mount -uw / &#x2305;       
/sbin/autodiskmount -va &#x2305;        
/usr/sbin/diskutil repairPermissions / &#x2305;

and finally

reboot &#x2305;

an easier way to do this is install AppleJack (before things go wrong). Boot into single user mode and type:

applejack auto reboot &#x2305;

again no luck.

Next, I plugged in a firewire 800 external HD and held the ⌥ key while booting so as to boot from the external HD. Everything seemed to work fine. At this point I was at a cross road. The sensible next step is to do an archive and install. Since I clone my drives nightly via SuperDuper! and I had a recent backup, I decided to simply clone my backup back to my powerbook HD.

Success, Finally! Here I am now typing up the synopsis of my recovery. I am still mystified as to what caused the problem. I have a feeling the system clock was somehow reset making the date somewhere around 2001. Nonetheless, problem solved. As a summary here were the steps I took.