[dnanian]

OK, Bill.

The implication here is that you've got either a bad executable file or receipt, and that's what's causing the trouble. When the repair permissions part of OSX reads it, it gets confused and fails... and generates an error.

When the Disk Utility version sees this happen, it fails with that weird "disconnected" message. But the cause of that message is the failure of the underlying tool, and that cause of that is some file on your drive that's corrupted.

Figuring out what is going to be a challenge, though. We pretty much know it's not an OS executable or receipt, because it happens on both your upgraded sandbox and on your original drive (right?). So, it must be a 3rd party receipt or application.

The first thing I'd do to diagnose it would be to run Disk Utility or Disk Warrior on the drive and repair it. If that doesn't help, more radical steps will need to be taken.