I'm using an eMac PowerPC G4, 38gig on OS X 10.4.7. I noticed yesterday that my computer was running slow, and realizing I hadn't done anything to clean it up recently, I decided to put in the old Norton Disk Doctor and clean some things up. I didn't know that Norton was now a bad thing for macs since OSX came along; in fact, it was working just fine with it up to this point. Anyhow, I restarted on the disk, which opens up system 9, and I run the disk doctor. It finds there's a problem with the Attributes file, and says I should fix it. I click on fix it, and the whole thing quits on me. I tried a few more times and it still didn't work. So I restarted the computer, but lo and behold, when it goes back into OSX, the screen turns dark grey with the power symbol in the background, and a message saying I need to restart the computer in six different languages. When I try to do this, the same thing keeps popping up.

It suddenly goes into single-user mode, with the message:

/etc/master.passwd: Not a directory
-sh: /etc/profile: Not a directory
-sh: 2.05b#

In order to get out of this, I followed the instructions at the Apple Support Site on this page: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106908

So now I decide to go out and get DiskWarrior 3.0.3 to try and fix it. When I run the rebuild task, it gets through the whole thing and has a new version of my harddrive, but it says it can't replace it because the disk is "too severely damaged." Further attempts confirm this. It at least shows me that I still have all my files and applications on the harddrive still.

Next, I put in my Apple Hardware Test, to make sure nothing's wrong on that end. It comes out okay. Great.

I tried going into it on Safe Boot Mode, but when it reaches the point of the grey apple symbol and the gear icon turning, it stays on that for five minutes, and then promptly shuts the whole computer down.

I must note that I haven't been able to get into my computer other than through starting up a CD. I can't get to any files or programs or whatever.

I got my 10.4 install disk and start up the computer. I go to disk utility, and try to repair the harddrive. It goes through the motions and comes back with this message at the end of the list of things it went through:

Checking Extended Attributes file
Invalid key length
Volume check failed

So then I decided to try and re-install 10.4. (I couldn't find the Tiger install disk) I tell it to save all my stuff in the Previous Systems folder, and it gets to installing. At the end, it says it could not complete installing because of an error.

The last thing I tried was going into single user mode, and running fsck. I typed in:

/sbin/fsck -fy

It goes through the process, and does the same thing as the disk utilities did:

Checking Extended Attributes File
Invalid key length
(8, 2)
**Volume Check failed

And that's where I'm at. Nothing seems to be able to get past this problem, and I still can't get into my computer. Hope someone has some ideas out there, because I can't find anything on my own at this point. Thanks.

Another victim of the poor compatibility (a gross understatement!) of Norton and Tiger. I wouldn't trust Norton near any version of OSX.
I hope you have a good backup, because I think you are condemned to reformatting your harddrive (I would zero out) and reinstalling your OS.

Tom-X is correct in his assessment. I winced when I read ,I decided to put in the old Norton Disk Doctor and clean some things up. It was unnecessary to read further to know the rest of your story. Your file structure is toast and even had you had the last version of Norton that would have trashed 10.4.x.

If you do not have good backups of your data files, ProsoftEngineering's Data Rescue II offers a free test version to see if it can recover the files for you before you buy.