Newbie needs help with OS9

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Hi I'm new to the forum and new to Macs.
I've just obtained a PowerMac G4 with OS9 that used to belong to a school.
Problem is that it won't boot properly, I'm lead to believe that the school wiped out the hard drive and then reinstalled OS9 but I'm having problems.
If I turn the machine on I get an Apple icon then about a minute later I get a prohibitive sign.
The only way to get the machine to boot is to put in the Install CD and power up while holding the 'C' key. Then it will load up and display the contents of the CD. I can close that and then start looking at the hard drive.
My first guess was that perhaps it was trying to boot from a network, so I made sure that the hard drive was the drive to boot from. That made no difference, also run a repair on the drive to no avail.
Any ideas what the problem could be?
There doesn't seem to be any applications or anything worthwhile keeping on the machine so perhaps it may be easier to reload OS9, if that's the case will I need to input some sort of product key. I haven't been given one, is there a way of finding out what my current one is?

Please bear in mind that although I have a little experience with MS Windows I know nothing about Macs so please don't assume I will know any Mac terminology.
Thanks in advance.
 
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Mac Mini Core i7 2012 | White 2009 MacBook 2 Ghz | 733 Mhz G4 Quicksilver
Use the restore CD you have to do a clean installation, that's your best bet IMO

A G4 should come with some version of OS X as well
 
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Thank you for your replies.
It came with an OSX 10.4 disc as well. I didn't mention it earlier as I thought I'd been given it by mistake!
So do I do a clean install of OS9 followed by OSX or vice versa.
Or do I just install OSX and dispense with OS9.

Sorry if this is a daft question but why have two operating systems?
 
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I doubt if you will have any use for OS 9, since you will not be running any old classic apps

Do the fresh install of Tiger - then you will have a mac like mine, an older mac, but with one of the most advanced OSes around

edit: forgot to say, when you are done, download the 10.4.11 combo update to bring your mac bang up to date (well fo Tiger anyway)

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411comboupdateppc.html
 
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MacHeadCase

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An example of why someone would hang on to OS 9 or the Classic environment would be someone that has a very old printer or scanner, perhaps, whose drivers have not been updated for OS X use. Same goes for games or applications as louishen mentioned.
 
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Please bear in mind that although I have a little experience with MS Windows I know nothing about Macs so please don't assume I will know any Mac terminology.

Never punch any DOS code into a Mac. We Welcome you to the Mac World. Kick that Vista to the curb.
 
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Just to say that I've just dispensed with OS9 and now got Tiger succesfully working on the computer.
Thanks everyone for your help.
 

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