[G4] Jaguar - many apps fail to start - unexpected quit - resolution?

[Steve O'Neill]

I finally got it back working.  And I've been to hell and back, too - 
flashing question mark, no drive, and I learned a lot about recovering 
from that situation, at least in my case.  Thanks Brian, and thanks, CJ, 
for your suggestions.  I hope I can save someone else this grief.

This problem was originally an unexpected quit in almost every app I 
had, both Apple and 3rd-party, due to a protection fault in some 
subroutine in the X kernal that's used by all the affected apps.

First of all, I tried starting OS9.2.2, just to see if it still worked. 
  I'm convinced now that this whole ordeal started when I started 
Classic for the first time after installing Jaguar.  And I sure hope 
it's over.

When you start Classic in Jaguar for the first time, you get a box that 
says basically, "I'm going to update some OS9 files for classic, neither 
classic nor OS9 booting will be affected."

WRONG.  Reboot in OS 9.2.2, and this is what happens: the new Open 
Transport extension it installs doesn't work (actually Open Transport 
ASLM Modules), and a box appears that says there's an extension conflict 
and you need to restart with extensions off.  Only one extension has 
loaded, but there's a conflict.  Oh, yes, you're gonna lose QuickTime.

Anyway, after fighting with Extensions Manager for about an hour, things 
were sometimes erratic, then the Microsoft Mouse driver crashed (what 
else?).

Power off, power up, no happy mac.  No sad mac.  A blinking question 
mark in a folder.  That means there's no boot device found.  The OS9 
install CD offered to initialize the disk it couldn't read.  No thanks, 
I want my data.

Panic first, then get out Disk Warrior after Disk First Aid fails to fix 
it.  Disk warrior found a bunch of garbage, but claimed it could fix it. 
  I saw my desktop when it was done, so now I knew I had a chance, but 
still no boot.

But on the Disk Warrior CD, there's about one app that you can use: 
Startup Disk, just like the regular control panel.  I chose 10.1.5 and 
restarted, and it worked.  Apparently the data that specified the start 
disk had been lost, and this was the only way I could set it without an 
otherwise bootable system.  No, Startup Manager and 
hold-down-the-X-key-at-boot did NOT work.

So I now have NO IDEA what happened to the original problem, except Disk 
Warrior may have fixed some file corruption created in the Classic 
extension snafu.  And now I have to reinstall OS9.

But I found two VERY important things here, that are NOT in the Apple 
Knowledge Base:

1. Never run Classic from 10.1.5.  It'll hose OS9.  If you want OS9, 
boot that.
2. If you get the blinking ? folder at boot, try to set the startup 
system (using a CD or other drive since your HD doesn't work), it just 
may be confused, and it's a lot easier than initializing the disk and 
recovering from a backup, which is what I almost did (16 DVDs).