Ticket Options
Question Details
TICKET ARCHIVE -> can't choose boot disk
kmsacca - Jul 15, 2006 - 10:31 am
The system starts, goes through all normal procedures, and then halts at a blue screen. I can't even try disk utilities, though, because I can't make it boot from the cd. This is a CRT IMac, running 10.2. Not sure exactly what precipitated this, because it's my daughter's. I've tried all the keystrokes at startup, Command, Option, Shift & Delete; C; Shift; none of these work. I am able to start in single user mode, but can't find any reference to the CD to mount either the Hardware Test disk or the System disk. Seems that it's not getting as far as recognizing that drive in its startup. Is there a way for me to use a USB flash drive to boot it? I tried copying the Hardware Test cd to the flash, but of course it didn't copy the hidden files. I could perhaps clone it, but I don't want to bother getting that software and trying if you are able to tell me that it won't work. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
ishan - Jul 15, 2006 - 10:49 am
Your best choice (assuming you have another Mac with a FW port) is to boot up your iMac in Target mode and connect it to your other Mac via FW. To do this, boot up your other Mac as usual, turn off the iMac and hold down the "T" keu while turning it on. Eventually, you should see a FW icon bouncing around your iMac's screen and the drive from your iMac will appear as a FW drive on your other Mac's desktop.
You can then run Disk Utility on that drive, repair permissions, use DiskWarrior, reinstall the system or anything else you like. Before doing any of that, though, copy the important files from the dysfunctional iMac to another drive, CD or whatever you prefer so that you don't lose any data.
I really encourage folks to keep a bootable backup clone on an internal or external FW drive for just these kinds of situations. You can install all your third party utilities on it so that when disaster strikes, you not only have a disk to boot from, but the ability to make necessary repairs. Ideally, you should have another bootable drive which contains just the system and utilities so that if your clone gets corrupted by whatever is causing headaches with your boot drive, you have a "virgin" drive to boot from.
In a household with multiple Macs, you can set up a NAS (Network Attached Server) to serve this function.
That's probably more than you wanted to know...sorry, I got carried away. More than half of the questions here at macosx.com are related to hard drive corruption and crashes. Hard drives WILL crash and systems WILL fail. I work in an environment where uptime has to be 99.9999%, so perhaps I'm too paranoid
HTH and please let us know what happens. Thanks.
You can then run Disk Utility on that drive, repair permissions, use DiskWarrior, reinstall the system or anything else you like. Before doing any of that, though, copy the important files from the dysfunctional iMac to another drive, CD or whatever you prefer so that you don't lose any data.
I really encourage folks to keep a bootable backup clone on an internal or external FW drive for just these kinds of situations. You can install all your third party utilities on it so that when disaster strikes, you not only have a disk to boot from, but the ability to make necessary repairs. Ideally, you should have another bootable drive which contains just the system and utilities so that if your clone gets corrupted by whatever is causing headaches with your boot drive, you have a "virgin" drive to boot from.
In a household with multiple Macs, you can set up a NAS (Network Attached Server) to serve this function.
That's probably more than you wanted to know...sorry, I got carried away. More than half of the questions here at macosx.com are related to hard drive corruption and crashes. Hard drives WILL crash and systems WILL fail. I work in an environment where uptime has to be 99.9999%, so perhaps I'm too paranoid
HTH and please let us know what happens. Thanks.
kmsacca - Jul 16, 2006 - 7:29 pm
The IMac with the problem doesn't have a FW port. Just 2 USBs.
ishan - Jul 16, 2006 - 8:53 pm
Then I'm afraid you'll either have to call AppleCare or take the iMac to your closest Apple Store or Apple-authorized reseller. Aside from the time all this will take, just looking at the unit may cost $50+. You must have a fairly old iMac not to have any FW ports. Sorry.
IF THIS IS YOUR QUESTION AND YOU WISH TO RESPOND, LOGIN HERE FIRST.
