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Mac OSX 10.6.4 - Missing Thread Record

acr
Rising Star
Posts: 266
Thanks: 31
Fixes: 1
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Mac OSX 10.6.4 - Missing Thread Record

For the past couple of months I have been having problems with 'Missing Thread Record" errors. The latest error record from Disk Utility is attached.
I am using a Mac Pro running 10.6.4. with 7GB of RAM. My main hard drive is backed up each night using Superduper and I also have a Time Machine backup. I have always been able to repair the errors by booting into the Superduper backup and using Disk Utility to repair the main hard drive. I can go a couple of weeks without errors and then have the error a couple of times in a week. The errors do however appear to be increasing in regularity.
My first thought was the main hard drive was failing so I put in a new hard drive and completely reinstalled everything. Only two days after completing this i got a Missing Thread Record error.
Next, I thought it may be a problem with the RAM. I testing this using MEMTEST 4.22 but it found no errors.
I have also run TechTool Deluxe but again it found no hardware errors.
Any suggestions to help diagnose & fix the cause of this intermittent fault?
4 REPLIES 4
Be3G
Grafter
Posts: 6,111
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Mac OSX 10.6.4 - Missing Thread Record

Ooh a fellow Mac Pro owner! I'd been thinking I was the only one here…
I'm afraid I can't offer any advice about your problem from personal experience; however, I have found this on Apple's support forums which looks promising.
For what it's worth actually, as much as I don't want to turn people away from this community, if you do have a need to ask on a forum about a Mac problem then that generally is the best place to go – we don't have many Mac users here, and most users of Apple's boards are very helpful.
acr
Rising Star
Posts: 266
Thanks: 31
Fixes: 1
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Mac OSX 10.6.4 - Missing Thread Record

I had already used Google to find a number of forums/threads (including the Apple boards) with people having the same problem but none of them appeared to have found a definite solution to the problem. All seem to involve software which I do not use or hardware which I had already ruled out ! The link you gave does appear promising as I do use VMware fusion and so I will be following it to see the outcome.
Many thanks for your reply.
Be3G
Grafter
Posts: 6,111
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Mac OSX 10.6.4 - Missing Thread Record

No problem. It would seem to be something software-related judging from the fact that some people had hardware replaced and still encountered the problem; I've been running a Mac Pro for a year now and haven't had that error at all so it's clearly not something inherent in all Mac Pros, which means the only other explanation could be software. Let's hope that VMware is, indeed, the culprit.
MacOS10
Grafter
Posts: 176
Thanks: 4
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Mac OSX 10.6.4 - Missing Thread Record

I would set aside a day to do the following...
1. Make sure your Super Duper clone is completely up to date.
2. Boot from the clone, launch Disk Utility, select our Mac Pro's system drive, and click the "Erase" tab.
3. Select the "Mac OS Extended (Journalled)" format, and click the "Options" button.
4. In the erase options, select "Zero all Data" - which will write zeros to every block on the drive.
(Note: this will take a few hours, so maybe set this running overnight?)
5. Once the drive's erased, use Super Duper to clone everything back from the clone to the newly formatted drive.
6. Boot from the Mac Pro's drive and keep an eye on things.
(check all your software is working properly before allowing Time Machine to continue backing up)
Sounds like an underlying directory problem to me. We have a couple of Mac Pros at work which sometimes produce minor errors - not specifically that one though. I don't think it's anything specific to the Mac Pros, these types of errors seem more frequent since Leopard 10.5 and Snow Leopard 10.6, so maybe these systems are much less forgiving of minor disk errors than earlier versions. Probably a good thing really, as minor directory problems can usually escalate into a major disk problem over time if left untreated.
I haven't yet got round to doing the above, as someone is using the Macs every day. One of these days I'll get round to it, in the meantime I just make sure I keep running Disk Utility every few weeks to keep an eye on it.
Another thing I would try is next time there's a system update (in your case 10.6.5 must be coming soon?), then download and install the Combo version of this from Apple's Support web pages, rather than relying on the built-in Software Update - which will only offer you the smaller incremental 10.6.4 >> 10.6.5 update. Before doing that, though, check the drive is healthy using Disk Utility's "Verify Disk". A Combo update is pretty hefty, but it will only patch the bits that need patching, and in my experience they're usually more reliable than the incremental updates - even when just updating to the next .1 release.