Troubleshooting DiskWarrior 3.0 (#2): Use the option key to select startup disk
MacFixIt reader William Hofius describes an intermittent problem with the DiskWarrior 3.0 CD, which we have experienced and worked around in-house: "I have a Dual 450Mhz Power Mac G4. I attempted to boot from the DiskWarrior 3 CD-ROM. The suggested method is to restart the Mac from the OS X Apple Menu and hold down the 'C' key while booting. I followed this procedure and everything seemed to be going just fine. The Mac re-started, (I pressed the 'C' key), the gray Apple screen appeared, the little spinning daisy appeared and spun away. Suddenly, the screen went black. I waited and waited but the screen remained black. I waited 15 minutes, nothing. The system was still powered on, but other than that it was dead."
Selecting the DiskWarrior 3.0 CD as your chosen startup volume through System Preferences can cause similar results.
To solve this problem try starting up while holding down the option key which will display a list of available startup drives and allow you to select the DiskWarrior 3.0 CD. In-house, this method worked well, while holding the "C" key caused the system to be unable to find any startup disk, simply displaying the blinking question mark icon.
UPDATE: If you have access to a second hard drive or bootable removable media, you can startup from that volume and run DiskWarrior 3.0 without the above-mentioned problems. The second disk can be booted into either Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X.
See this report for coverage of other startup problems with the DiskWarrior 3.0 CD, including an inability to properly restart after repairs are made.
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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I am still waiting for my upgrade.
I emailed them about why
there was up to a six week delay in shipping upgrade CDs, but
received no response.
In this day and age, I would think a
company with such a valuable utility would make arrangements to
have CDs duplicated quickly. The DiskWarrior products have been
great. This is my only complaint: they don't really care enough to
get the darn CDs printed and shipped to their existing customer
base quickly. It is bad marketing. Think of all the great word-of-
mouth that cannot take place, since they don't have the product. If
there is a good reason for this, I'd like to hear it.
Me too - this is crap, especially since we are such loyal customers.
Apple Stores have boxes of them in stock - what's up?
with no problem.
cost of the update.
I'm going to be running OS 9.2.2 on a 400Mhz iMac DV for a few more months, then hope to go to a new Mac with Panther. Meanwhile, I run DiskWarrior 2.1 with complete satisfaction.
But this is ONLY after having to do very similar workarounds to those startup issues described for DW v 3! So, do I want to "upgrade" only to have to go thru the same faldarol to use this $80 utility?
Sorry Alsoft, but after a few years, customers expect REAL improvements on such fundamental bugs.
option key to boot the DiskWarrior CD. I was able to successfully start
the DiskWarrior CD by holding down the "C" key. I ran the program.
After all was done and I rebooted from the Sys HD. Now, I am unable to
see any CD or FireWire device. The only way I can use these items is if I
boot using Sys 9.x
Disregard... apparently DiskWarrior was the cause, issue resolved.
- by jchuzi December 25, 2003 9:57 AM PST
- My PowerMac G4, dual 450 boots easily (while holding down the
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(9 Comments)C key) from the DiskWarrior 3.0 CD, but only from a cold start.
Attempting to start from the CD by clicking "restart" either doesn't
work or I give up too soon (and force a shutdown). Does anybody
have an idea about this?