OS X Boot Nightmare....

I have a dual boot G4 which I usually run in OS 9. I have booted it
up in OS X before without a problem.

Today I set it to boot in OS X and upon restarting all I could get was the grey apple logo sitting there....
....
....
....and nothing else, ever!

After several hours of trawling the net i've cleared the P-RAM and got it to option-boot into the screen where you can pick the OS.

Now the problem is that only OS X will show up. And when I select that, I get a gray apple for a few seconds, then a gray symbol that looks like a No Smoking sign but without the ***.

I need it to boot into OS 9 but it won't!!! AARRRGG

Just to top it all off I can't find any CD's with either OS on them, so I can't even boot up that way!

Does anyone have any ideas what could of caused this type of boot
error, and more importantly how can I resolve it?!!?

Thanx.

Don't know if this will work you, but it works for me on my beige G3. Reboot the system and hold down the option key until the system starts to boot.

Thanx man for your swift response, but as I said I've already gone down that road....

Studio_Woody said:

i've cleared the P-RAM and got it to option-boot into the screen where you can pick the OS.

Click to expand...

...It won't work, it'll only let me choose OS X from that screen (OS X refuses to boot) and I need to be in OS 9 anyway.

Anyone else got any ideas? I need to use this machine 9am for work!

As soon as the computer boots hold down Apple + S

If you get to single user mode where you see a bunch of unix mumbo jumbo then when it is done type this and hit enter

/sbin/fsck -f

when that is done run it again if it fixed anything and if it says nothign was changed type exit and hit enter

What trpnmonkey suggests should do it.
Nevertheless, for future issues:
If you want to be able to choose between OS X and OS9 by starting with the option-key pressed, you need to move OS9 to an other partition or Harddisk, if you have a second one.

The default installation has OS X and OS9 on the same partition, this doesn't work with option-key booting.