MacBook Air won't start up, won't enter secure mode and repair in Disk Utility

Question

Unfortunately some data was downloading and my Mac got stuck, so I forcefully power it off. After that, I couldn't enter the login screen, because the loading bar was stuck.

I tried to enter safe mode, but with no success. After that, I entered single user mode and entered some command to repair disk, but it scanned for 10 minutes and failed.

I finally managed to enter recovery/repair mode with Disk Utility (previously no disk was listed in menu), and clicked 'First Aid'. This failed after one second with something like 'invalid node'. I Googled some time and entered Terminal in recovery mode and entered this command that many people praised, but I got this:

-bash-3.2# /sbin/fsck_hfs -yprd /dev/disk0s2
/dev/rdisk0s2: starting
Unable to open block device /dev/disk0s2: Resource busyjournal_replay(/dev/disk0s2) returned 16
/dev/rdisk0s2: ** /dev/rdisk0s2 (NO WRITE ACCESS)

/dev/rdisk0s2: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck_hfs MANUALLY.
-bash-3.2#

Answer 1

It seems that you may be trying to fsck the wrong partition. You can use duskutil to find which disk is your boot disk

diskutil list

You're looking for something named usually "Macintosh HD" or "Yosemite". Try the fsck on that, and if you're still getting the "Resource busy" error, try to unmount it, either in the Disk Utility in recovery, or by using diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk# and trying again.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Try this http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/steps-take-when-your-mac-wont-start-3423817/

You could start with resetting the NVRAM. Just try a few things from the above URL—might help to resolve the issue.

Reset the NVRAM, because why not?

In the PowerPC days, we talked about resetting the PRAM. On modern Macs, the real term is resetting the NVRAM. The name refers to special memory sections on your Mac that store data that persists even when the Mac is shut off, like volume settings, screen resolution, and similar options.

Resetting that data isn't harmful, but quite frankly it's also rarely genuinely useful. But man, at this point, it can't hurt.

You might need to grow an extra finger or two for this one, or have a friend help you out. Hold down all of these keys: Command, Option, P and R, and turn on the Mac. Keeping holding the keys down until you hear the Mac restart again. Apple says to let it restart just the one time; I usually listen for a second reboot, and then release the keys.

In some cases, after performing this step, your Mac will restart normally. In other cases, you might instead see a progress bar on startup. If the progress bar fills up and then the Mac starts up, you're probably good to go. In some cases we've seen, however, the Mac shuts down at around the halfway point in the progress bar.