What is the crowd's opinion of DiskWarrior?

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If it was accidentally removed without ejecting, it could have corrupted the directory tree which could cause this.

I would do the following to check:

• Try hooking it up to another Mac

• Try using another case

• Try using a recovery program

• If all else fails, restore from backup (you do have a backup for your "important stuff", don't you?)

If you NEED a HD recovery I've used this company a few times in the past. <strong>Advanced Data Solutions</strong> They do an excellent job, complete clean room on site and actual hardware recovery, not just software hacks.

But before I try anything drastic, I've had great success with disk warrior saving unresponsive drives. Just as long as there's a directory issue and not a true mechanical problem, this is my first choice.

Either way... if you get the data... make a backup asap.

DiskWarrior is popular for drive recovery, and its recommended by Macworld and John Gruber. It comes on a bootable DVD that it runs off.

I haven't ever used it myself, though.

Check out a program called DiskWarrior by Alsoft. Your drive has to be formated HFS.

It can detect and repair data structure errors and repair them. (It can also do disk permissions, but meh.)

Are you trying to install the OS straightaway or boot to the Disk Utility first?

You're telling me Windows 8 will install so you've obviously got a bootcamp partition on there and that is what is stopping the system from running correctly.

It has to go. You have to use the Disk Utility first and repartition the drive, not the Macintosh HD volume. The disk headers have to be rebuilt completely in order to wipe whatever is on that EFI partition - use the USB stick with Lion on it, the Disk Utility is more robust than the later version in sierra.

Something's not adding up here. What are the steps you're following from start to finish? An installer that is booting to the Disk Utility will not need to access a drive, it writes the needed boot files to the memory on the assumption that any installed hard drive is empty and/or unformatted.

Have you tried a third-party utility like DiskWarrior?

Disk Warrior is the legacy essential Mac disk repair utility. Older versions of OS X were much more susceptible to directory/permissions corruptions and Disk Warrior got me out of many many issues that the OS on its own could not get me out of. It doesn't fix actual data corruption issues, but it's hard to tell directory and permissions issues from data issues given the usefulness of system errors. Grey's error sounds like a directory structure issue, not a FS data issue http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

"Virus", well maybe not. MS exploits vs office macro scripting or outlook scripts... you can forget about those unless you're foolish enough to install that crap on your new clean system.

But trojan and java exploits... yes macs do in fact get those. The good news is that apple does address the issue with regular updates to the OS and that they tend to require some "help" from the user to gain entry.

Still, there are free anti malware apps that are available and that do a damn good job.

I would beef up the OS firewall with little snitch it helps let you know what your system is doing and what's trying to communicate without your approval. For better security... especially if you're in a mixed environment or surf a lot.Intego's security barrier is damn good It's solved some mysterious problems on different systems in the past.

You will need a utility package to keep the mac running smoothly. rebuilding the directory is fine (disk utility is provided) but I would download the free utility ONYX and also get <strong>Diskwarrior</strong> for deeper drive upkeep. It's saved a few systems that weren't starting up like they should from data loss and costly repairs. Trust me, It'll Save your Bacon

Other than that upgrade the RAM yourself. HD upgrades are also a snap even on the laptops.

Just remember, there's no need for anything micro$oft anymore on your system (except for silverlight via netflix).

There's lots of options and ability for the platform and all you need to do is use google to find it.

bests!

seems like the OS update wasn't a good one.

Hope that you have a backup.

Have you run a utility package yet?

IF you don't, first thing I would try is to rebuild my desktop with the diskutility or even better use ONYX to perform those functions. Then clean out the different system and application caches.

I bet that if you don't clean things up in your system ... the directory is all cluttered Either way, bad strings and system instructions creep in to the system all the time best to clean them out so that the system doesn't go and refer back to them and cause a hang/freeze like you're describing. You'll have to reenter some of your info and settings.

if you can space a few bucks... you'll need to get a good utility app. I use Diskwarrior it's saved me a lot of problems.