[G4] Re: System Preferences Update

[Rick Smykla]

Tom,

I'm late to this thread, but . .

I'd consider disconnecting the hard drive's power connector and  
restarting with the CD in the drive. Do a PRAM reset on the first  
boot attempt, and then see if the system will boot. If successful, go  
into System Preferences and set the CD as your selected boot drive.  
Then shut down, reconnect the HD power, hold the C key and pray.

More extreme measures would include moving the drive to another  
system (internally or via firewire case) for formatting. Give the  
above method a try first, and good luck.

Rick

On Apr 14, 2007, at 12:50 AM, Dan A Currie wrote:

> Technophobic_Tom at comcast.net wrote:
>
>>> Every time I use OS 9 and the C or X keys it just keeps
>>> restarting  with the smiley Mac and when I use OS 10.2
>>> all I get is a gray screen.
>>
>>
>> Are they legitimate system disks?
>>
> Yes, they are legitimate disks and I finally figured out what I did  
> to cause it ... I just do not know how to fix it.  My MDD runs  
> Tiger and I forgot which computer I was on and ran Applejack ... on  
> a computer with 2 system folder and 2 different OS's .  I think  
> that screwed it up!!
>
> Now that John Baltutis was kind enough to show me how to get beyond  
> the gray screen and back to the desktop, I just need a way to get  
> it to recognize either OSs' startup CD so that I can scrub the HD  
> and do a clean install of OS 10.2.8 and end this long nightmare!!
>
> Short of taking a magnet to it I am stuck and I have repeatedly  
> tried restarting with both OS CDs and it will not see them as  
> Startup CDs and goes back to 10.2.8 and boots up nicely.  Even  
> inserted the original 10.2 CD and tried to make it restart it by  
> trying to re-install the OS but it goes back to 10.2.8.
>
> Wits end and getting hairless,