creating a disk image on the Mac desktop

this is driving me completely insane. I realized I could move my
iPhoto library off the laptop's internal drive, gaining me 3 more
Gigs. The QuickBooks install has been running for nearly three hours
now and is just about to eat up the extra 3gb too....
 >> Stay informed about: creating a disk image on the Mac desktop 

On Jan 30, 3:26 pm, Brian wrote:
> this is driving me completely insane. I realized I could move my
> iPhoto library off the laptop's internal drive, gaining me 3 more
> Gigs. The QuickBooks install has been running for nearly three hours
> now and is just about to eat up the extra 3gb too....

OK well I found some sort of problem on the Mac side. I don't know if
this is related to Virtual PC at all, but in Library/Logs/Console/501
(really no idea what "501" is) there is a file called console.log.0
that is now 17.32 GB in size.

Also, when poking around with Activity Monitor, I found that there was
a process called 'hdiutil' that was eating up 50% of the CPU, and
would not go away after I quit VPC and took a Force Quit to get rid
of....

off to Google to see what I can find elsewhere

so much for getting the 4th Quarter 940 in the mail today.
Arrrgggghhhh.
 >> Stay informed about: creating a disk image on the Mac desktop 

apparently there are few different bugs that can make your Log files
take up all of your space, but the most common one has something to do
with iTunes and it's preferences file:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4961687#4961687
 >> Stay informed about: creating a disk image on the Mac desktop 

but this probably was generated by VPC:

hdiutil: attach failed - no mountable file systems
The disk image you are opening may be damaged and could damage your
system.
Are you sure you want to open this disk image? (Y/N)
Are you sure you want to open this disk image? (Y/N)


this is from the console.log file; it went on for another 17 gigabytes
of the same. I think I have my QBooks file rescued on to the Mac
desktop and won't need to attach to any more old Windows volumes. I
hope.
 >> Stay informed about: creating a disk image on the Mac desktop 

> The first time this happened, I ended up with a disk image of the
> Windows machine on the Mac Desktop when I was examining some of the
> VPC files using the 'Show Package Contents'; I think I double-clicked
> on something (the basedrive file?) and that resulted in a drive being
> mounted on Mac desktop. Anyone know which of the package contents
> could lead to that happening?

well I have this sorted out. When you try the PC List / Settings /
Mount Drive Now
five things can happen:

1) the image mounts nicely on the Mac Desktop
2) a process called 'hdiutil' or something similar goes into a loop
which can eventually
fill up the current console.log file to the tune of gigabytes and
gigabytes full of the
same error message
3) VPC can freeze ("Not Responding") and you will need to do a Force
Quit
4) It will report an error message ("Unexpected Error" or "Drive could
not be mounted")
a) and then when you retry you may discover it actually did
mount ("Drive is already mounted")
hint: look at the root Mac machine level "User Name's
Computer", not just on your desktop
b) you'll just get one of the above error messages each
time

I suggest keeping the utility Activity Monitor running before you try
complex VPC recovery activities. (I keep that program in the Dock,
myself.) If 'hdiutil' is looping, you can make it stop by Inspecting
the process with Activity Monitor and selecting Force Quit there. If
trying to mount an image makes VPC itself hang ("Not Responding"),
you will also be able to see this in the A.Monitor process list.

The good news is that when I woke up this morning I realized today was
the 31st, and I will get my tax info out on time .... I had a back-up
of the QB data. I lost one week of payroll and 2-3 customer invoices.

I think my second virtual Windows Machine crashed because I was
running it off an external FireWire drive. While the Mac was asleep,
the cable was disconnected, which woke up the Mac; but Windows and
QBooks never recovered. I can access the drive images of this second
machine just fine (my original, bloated, 1st machine's images cause
all the problems) and get at my QB file, but on my new third machine
with fully updated Windows and QuickBooks I can't open that file as it
was open during the crash.

I would still like to try and recover a few things in my original
machine but I'm about ready to give up on that.
 >> Stay informed about: creating a disk image on the Mac desktop