You mentioned the iMac getting stuck about 15% of the way through startup....Are any icons for extensions appearing at startup? You could have a corrupt system extension that's gumming up the works. If you can start it up with the extensions off, that is probably the problem. You'll have to go through the process of elimination with the Extensions Manager control panel until you find the culprit. -Dave Original Message: Subject: [MacDV] Information re:iMac asked for. ??s on zapping the PRAM From: June Parlett My iMac is one of the original 233hrz Rev. A Bondi Blue, with a NewerTechnologies 433 CPU, max amt. of ram, and OS 8.6.1 I did get it to shut down, and when I restarted it threw away the finder preferences, stating that they were corrupted. and I was able to start up with the extensions off, and then shut down normally. Since the Finder preferences were redone, Couldn't I also trash the System preferences, and the Macintosh HD preferences, and then restart, to see if that would help. I know that they are rewritten when they are in the trash(that has not been emptied). I learned that in a Troubleshooting the Macintosh class, where the finder preferences are trashed first. I didn't think of it, the iMac did it for me. So since the Finder preferences were corrupted, then rewritten at the time of start up with the shift key pressed down. Now, everytime I go to start up, the imac gets stuck. I can see the progress bar, but it gets stuck around 15% of the way every time (not holding down the shift key). How do I remedy this problem and get my imac to start up properly? Thanks for your advice. Should I zap the p-ram, before trashing the system preferences, then restarting then trashing the HD preferences, in that order, separately. I seems like the main issue was the Finder, but it did make a statement about the Finder and the System Folder. Well, I was able to restart the computer only after taking a huge chance, and the computer trashed the finder preferences and created new Finder preferences. I still have the problem with the extensions because I cannot use the CD ROM to run any utilities. June