Mac mini had to re-install, now Appleworks is MISSING!

[padishahemperor]

OK, this is a biggie so grab a coffee, shisha, cigarrete or anything else you're acustomed to and be amazed and dazzled by my tale of woe...

My new Mac mini came the other day and I've been loving it (not literally but only because of willpower), until I adjusted the monitor settings, when I opened System Preferences and the Displays panel, it jumped to a resolution with a framerate which was incompatible with my monitor - I did nothing! I thought I could wait to see if it reverted back, so I left it for 10 minutes but nothing. I had no option but to force the power off. Every time I started the Mac, it's loading screen (Apple logo with spinning doo-dah) came up in what looked like 800x600 as soon as this screen passed, it flicked into the incompatible resolution. This happened repeatedly. I connected my mini to my partner's monitor - no problem, I set the desktop resolution to 800x600 at 60Hz, rebooted and it held the settings. By this time I was in need of coffee.

I put my mini back on my own monitor, started it up and.. you guessed it, it went back to the incompatible resolution, this went on from 11pm last night until this morning. I even tried this PRAM reset thing, no change. I have concluded that the Mac retains monitor specific data, so when I plugged my acursed monitor in, the little demon would go "ah haa! I am not playing with you!!"

I remembered from my old Mac OS 8 days that the CD could be booted, but the Panther DVD isn't like how I remember, there was no functional desktop and I could not see my HD, it just boots off the DVD and starts the Mac OSX installer. I was hoping for a monitor preferences file I could trash. I was not feeling the love..

First I tried to reinstall, by using the archiving of the existing system option. Took ages, didn't work. Same issue. This evening I had to loose all my emails and files (which I am furious about) and do a reformat and install.

My monitor now works.

BUT Despite my best efforts I cannot find AppleWorks, I have looked through the supplied optical disks and it simply is not there. Even though my partner and I got our Macs together the discs we got are different.

I have: "Mac OS X Install Disc 1 and Apple Hardware Test" and "Mac OS 9 Install Disc"
My partner has: "Mac OS X Install Disc 1 and Apple Hardware Test", "Mac OS 9 Install Disc" and "iLife 05 Install Disc" (which seems pointless as it's installed by the OS install disc)

I've searched thoroughly the file systems of each disc, no AppleWorks! Searching online shows I'm not the only one who has this problem, standard replies include 'it's on the install disk' etc. - it's not.

Question 1. Where is AppleWorks for the Mac mini (which will probably be different to other Mac's supplied discs).

Question 2. When a Mac get's the display settings wrong, how can you fix it? PRAM resets DO NOT fix it.

If anyone can help me I'll be so grateful, I'm quite stressed by it all....

[DeltaMac]

Reinstall AppleWorks? Click on THIS LINK to find out how.

Bypass the 'odd' video settings? Hold the Shift key down during reboot, until you see the blue 'loading' window, which will have the text 'SafeBoot' in that window. Let it boot to your desktop, then reset the Monitors setting to the proper setting (1024x768 and 75 Hz should be a safe one to use for this), then reboot to get back into normal mode.

[Convert]

Does the Monitor have it's own settings? Actual buttons on the monitor? If so, choose the option to reset the settings.

[padishahemperor]

@ DeltaMac : THANKYOU!! Not very intuitive though as those items look just like language support options, not the actual application. But it works and all is well again. Thanks for the info about the shift key, I will try it later and remember that one!

@ Convert : No it's quite old, I'm getting a new one this week but I'm having to use this in the interim, the shift key thing is what I could have done with knowing though..


THANKS TO YOU BOTH

[Convert]

That's perfectly OK. I remember when I had a 17 inch TFT monitor on my PC, I put it to something like 1680 x whatever, it was horrible, I freaked out. I fixed it in the end.