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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Boot Failure on 10.1.3

cluedo - May 21, 2006 - 12:19 pm

Hi,

I have a m8570 g4 dual 1.25 ghz mac with an optical disk. The system was running 10.1.3.

The problems started when I tried Loading os9.1- 9.2. The grey screen appeared and the Mac would boot no further. I cannot restart from the system disk CD or G4restore as mac hangs, when I start from Nortons Systemworks Cd I can boot up to desktop but, it cannot find the harddrive on the desktop. I have reset pram, nvram, employed verbose and single user modes all to no avail.The system will boot up in safe mode to OSX but I cannot select the start-up disk as the mouse is inactive.

Thanks for any assistance
mid-level OS experience

Mike

Thunderthud - May 21, 2006 - 11:49 pm

OS 9 will not run directly on your machine. If you want to have OS 9 available you must run it in the Classic environment of OS X and the 2 systems must reside on separate disks or partitions.

To get your machine back try resetting the CUDA switch on your Mac's motherboard. You must disconnect everything from the back of your Mac and open it up.

The CUDA switch looks like a little gray (sometimes red) doorbell button. It is indeed a momentary switch like a doorbell button. This is always done with the POWER OFF!

Hold it down and count to 5, button things up and restart from the OS X install CD (put the disk in the drive and hold down the "C" key on the keyboard while restarting).

Have Disk Utility from the install disk repair your drive. do the repair as many times as it takes until there are no errors. Then, if it will let you, have Disk Utility repair permissions on the drive (it will not let you repair permissions if it does not find a valid OS X system installed).

Then proceed to do a clean install of OS X. If this does not work you will have to reformat the disk that won't take the system. After the system is installed have Disk Utility ON THE INSTALLED SYSTEM DISK repair permissions on itself (it is important to do this to insure that the permissions match the installed system).

You can then proceed to install Classic and OS 9.2.2 if you want to.

cluedo - May 22, 2006 - 1:24 pm

Thanks for responding Charlie,

All was looking good after resetting the cuda , mac started to boot up from OSX
system CD. Had a smiley mac on sceen but after a few minutes a broken folder appeared and machine hung. I presume the system folder. The restore G4 Cd
booted up but again could not see HD. Any further ideas would be appreciated.

thanks again

cluedo - May 22, 2006 - 1:30 pm

Thanks for responding Charlie,

All was looking good after resetting the cuda , mac started to boot up from OSX
system CD. Had a smiley mac on sceen but after a few minutes a broken folder appeared and machine hung. I presume the system folder. The restore G4 Cd
booted up but again could not see HD. Any further ideas would be appreciated.

thanks again

Thunderthud - May 22, 2006 - 2:37 pm

It sounds as though your hard drive is messed up. Did you have Disk Utility repair the drive? That would be the thing to do. If it can't repair the drive you can try a utility such as Disk Warrior. No luck with either of these will mean that you have to reformat the drive because the disk data structures are wasted.

cluedo - May 22, 2006 - 2:46 pm

Nortons or diskwarrior can't see the HD in order to select and try and repair the problems.The only disk they see is themselves when i try to fix.

Is there any way I can reformat the disk without the aid of disk utility,
disk warrior or system disk

Again thanks

Thunderthud - May 22, 2006 - 2:51 pm

That's very strange. Even a totally messed up drive should show up to be reformatted. It's possible that the drive has failed hard and must be replaced.

cluedo - May 22, 2006 - 2:55 pm

Had feared as much..
Keep up the good work, the site is avery good resource

regards