Cannot Boot from anything but OSX!?!

[Al-Rashid]

Cannot Boot from ANYTHING but the internal OSX 10.2.4 HD.

Cannot startup from internal OS9hd, NO CD's, not Firewire, nothing!! WTF!?!

G4 450DP/1gb RAM/120gb HD's x2

[edX]

what methods of alternate booting have you tried?

[Al-Rashid]

Um, Internal OS9 (not classic), CD and Firewire...

[cybergoober]

Does your problem start after trying to boot to your internal 9?

I've had similar issues lately (not on my machines, luckily). On one system I was able to fix it by running the OS 9.2.2 updater via Classic. For whatever reason, once the boot command had been issued to to the (apparently) bad OS 9 install, it mucked everything else up. Booting into X allowed alternate boot methods with the exception of the bad(?) 9 install.

[edX]

not what systems, what methods?

holding down the option key, using system prefs, booting from a disk by holding C key down, etc?

[Al-Rashid]

All of those;
Booting from CD holding down the "C" key (various CD's)
Booting from the Boot Manager (CD's and Firewire drives)
Setting the Startup volume in Sys Prefs (CD's and Firewire drives)

[edX]

did this just start happening? did anything happen before hand like a crash or power outage? will classic boot in os x?

you might try a disk repair app like diskwarrior, techtool pro or drive10. also, can you boot up in single user mode (apple & S) and run fsck?

[Al-Rashid]

Ed-
This problem manifests itself yet again immediately after an Apple OSX Update (to 10.2.6 this time. Last time it was 10.2.4, if I recall).

I've tried every boot method and most every Utility on CD known to man. At least this time I can boot an OSX CD, but booting an OS9 CD/utiltity is futility; it will not happen, period.

I've seen several posts over the last months with this same problem manifested. Any idea what gives?