Odd Hard Drive Partition / Warning

[Mac]

Hello MPC,

I recently encountered a problem with my computer, not really severe, yet a little bothersome. I've been hacking my computer, about 10 times to be exact, with the old:

/sbin/mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.applesetupdone

I'd then just delete them after I'd typed in the administrator's password to install something. For those who don't know, I'm not the admin on my MacBook.

Yesterday I realized how slowly my computer was loading up. I thought it was some kind of software damage or possibly a virus. I plugged in a Leopard CD, one that came with another MacBook, but my MacBook spit it out after about 30 seconds. I put it in again and it stayed.

This had happened with another CD, Ford Racing 2, but in that case the CD had actually gotten stuck for a bit. So, summary, my computer's rejecting some CDs. I guess they aren't appealing enough.

I restarted my MacBook with the Leopard CD in it and pressed C. My computer started refused to boot from the CD. So I restarted, held down option as I started up and selected the Leopard CD to boot from. My computer started to boot but just restarted over and over and over. I cut the power, then started up and logged in.

I went into disk utility, and saw this:



and in more detail, this:



disk0s1 could not be mounted, erased, verified, or anything of the likes.  I was starting to get pissed off, since I knew my computer was messed up. I tried erasing the whole TOSHIBA hard drive, but it wouldn't allow me since disk0s1 was unmounted. I then popped in the Leopard CD and clicked on it, and clicked "Install Mac OS X." My computer restarted, but did the same thing as before.

So, I powered off and back on. I logged in, and poof! disk0s1 was gone! Does anyone have any ideas as to how this 200 MB partition could have been created by accident?

So, moral of this post. Don't abuse the administrator's hack on your computer! I think if overused, it can hurt your hard drive. My computer's booting up slower and is doing some funky things. I learned my lesson, don't learn yours.

[Hardcore]

Basically your right, don't abuse hacks as thats EXACTLY what they are, they are not sure ways of doing anything and they often do change files that are not ment to be. this can lead to problems, how exactly you got a random partition i can not say, it can be done manually but its highly unlikely you managed this trying to change your admin password.

In othercases, move slower you don't have to go crazy just because the computer is going slow, often just cleaning up your hard drive and letting it cool off will make it run faster.


Try getting http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatmenus/ the Istat Menus application, it shows bandwidth, disk usage, current CPU and many other parts temperatures, fan speeds ect, very handy for deducing what is wrong at the moment.

[aeria.]

Deleting .applesetupdone should not kill your DVD drive or make any new partitions. It's probably malfunctioned (I hope you still have a warranty).

[Soap Mactavish]

hacks dont screw up computers, people screw up computers

hacks are designed to specifically do tasks, you may wanna get second opinions before doing hacks on computers. Especially one like MAC OS X, OS X can only provide virtually no virus guarantee's if you are running your computer responsibly. AG is right, no matter what you do to your computer it will still only affect whatever you tell the computer to do. Let's hope that your warranty covers issues caused by hacking your own computer (probably not).   

[aeria.]

It's not hacking technically. It's just deleting ONE system file that doesn't do harm.

[aeria.]

Red LOVES it when Macs get hardware failures. He gets to laugh at us.

Anyway, Red is right, it's simply a hardware failure and you'll need to get that fixed.

[Mac]

I've got back-ups of my computer via Time Machine. I'll re-install Leopard with an original install disk then load my whole computer back on.

@ HC: I never tried to change my dad's administrator password. I just needed an admin password to install a program or get by time limits etc.

@ Russell: My computer isn't really wacked anymore. It still has a slow start-up, but that's because I have 115 gigabytes of files on my computer out of a 149 gig HD.

[Hardcore]

Topic cleaned, please stay on topic in the future trying to help Mac in this case, not argue over OS's.

This seems solved? If its not PM me and ill reopen it.