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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Hardware Upgrade Problems

chickbassist24 - Aug 8, 2005 - 10:00 pm

Recently, my hard drive crashed on my Mac, so i went to replace it. I got a 120gig hard drive and installed it, set the jumpers correctly (even tried a few different ways), and when i run the install wizard with mac osx, it does not see the hard drive. I even tested a 20gig hard drive thinking maybe it didn't support larger hard drives. I replaced the hard drive with the same exact brand and type of hard drive, just went from an 80 to a 120. It is a Power Mac G4 desktop. After rebooting a few tiems and trying a few different jumper settings, now i can't even boot from the cd drive anymore to even get into the setup. I have no idea what happend. Could it be a system board problem? BTW, the floppy and cd drive share a cable, and the hard drive is on its own. I thought maybe the ata port was bad on the mother board, so i got one of those ata expansion pci cards, but that didn't seem to work either, especially since the os isn't installed for me to install the drivers. If someone could please help me out with this issue or have any suggestions, i'd highly appreciate it. I just don't see why all of a sudden the CD won't boot up. When i do boot up, i just get the mac and the question mark. I dred the question mark....

DeltaMac - Aug 8, 2005 - 10:13 pm

Did you format the new hard drive? The OS X installer cannot see the hard drive, if there is no partition on the drive. You can do that when booted to the OS X installer. At the first screen, choose the Installer menu, or the Utilities menu if you are trying to install OS X 10.4 or newer.
Choose Disk Utility from that menu. When that opens, click on your drive. It will show the manufacturer info on that line. Then Click the partition tab. then click on the Volume Scheme tab, and select 1 Partition, then click OK, and click Partition button at the bottom of the window. In a few seconds, this will complete, and you should be able to quit the Disk Utility, and continue with installing OS X!
Let me know how it goes...
- Dale

chickbassist24 - Aug 8, 2005 - 10:25 pm

Well, what i was doing was just putting in the osX disk and booting from that, then just going thru the wizard, and it gets to the part where you want to install osX and the only thing that shows up is the CD drive holding the OSX CD. At the bottom is where it says the stuff about the partitions, is that the menu that you are talking about, or is this just at the very beginning of the install? But the problem i'm having now, is that the CD drive won't boot the CD any more. I don't know what could have changed, or why it just suddenly stopped working. Any suggestions on what to try on why the CD won't boot anymore?

chickbassist24 - Aug 8, 2005 - 10:26 pm

Or, will the CD go into the boot menu if the hard drive is not being seen?

chickbassist24 - Aug 8, 2005 - 10:43 pm

Oh, and on that startup screen where the little mac symbol blinks and then the question mark, it bliks back and forth a few times then the little file folder where the symbol and question mark is, it just goes black, so there's just the file folder on the screen. I also tried to put in the mac utilities disk and that didn't boot up either. I swear i must have messed something up when i was fooling with the hard drive, but i checked all the cables from the mother bord to the cd drive, and they're all secure, i didn't change any of the jumpers on there, so i don't know whats going on now.Oh, and they are getting power to them, maybe the cables? I have no idea at this point.

DeltaMac - Aug 8, 2005 - 10:56 pm

Follow the procedure that I posted. Boot to the installer CD, Choose the Installer menu at the top of the screen, and choose the Disk Utility, the rest is as I stated earlier. You can be at any of the several screens, but the first one is where you select the language - that one would be fine.
If you can't boot to the CD - restart, and hold the Option-Apple-P-R You should hear the start Chime. Continue to hold those same 4 keys until you hear the Chime 2 more times, then release those keys, and begin holding the 'C' key, so you can boot from the CD. Then continue with the above. Should work.
I think when you get a partition on the hard drive, the rest will be fine.

- Dale

chickbassist24 - Aug 8, 2005 - 11:00 pm

That might be a problem too becuase i'm not using a mac keyboard, i'm just using a standard usb dell keyboard, so what are my options instead of the option - apple-P-R?

DeltaMac - Aug 8, 2005 - 11:09 pm

try the alt-Windows-P-R - I think - or maybe this just won't work with a PC keyboard. Maybe you could borrow an Apple keyboard?

- Dale

chickbassist24 - Aug 8, 2005 - 11:18 pm

Ok, the alt - windows - P - R worked, i continued to hold them and let the chime ring 2 more times, then i released them and began holding down the C key. The CD drive started up and the screen was gray, then the screen blinked and went right to the question mark and apple logo. I held C down the whole time, could there be an issue with the drive? Don't know why it all of a sudden won't work anymore. I can't boot from any CD now.

DeltaMac - Aug 9, 2005 - 7:49 am

If you still have the PCI IDE adapter card installed, try removing that and plug the drive back into the logic board.

chickbassist24 - Aug 9, 2005 - 8:13 am

I already tried removing that. But nothing changed regarding the CD drive. The CD and Floppy are plugged in on the one port, and the hard drive was on the other. I didn't change anything else. I took out the PCI adapter, and went back to the original setup. Could the board be fried or smething? I also tried just holding in the ALT key on boot up, it went to a blue screen with two arrows on it, but it keeps freezing bfore i have a chance to do anything. Do you have any ideas?