G4 Quicksilver start problem

Heh guys.

Can anyone help me. Went to power up my G4 Quicksilver running Tiger and I get a blank screen with a small FOLDER icon in the centre of the screen. This has the FINDER icon on it that flashes and becomes a QUESTION MARK.

It was fine last night. I haven't changed anything in it so would appreciate what may be causing the problem and what is the fix to it.

Please help as I am having to result to using a PC for the time being.

Reaperman

It means that the computer cannot recognise a working operating system on your start-up disk.

Your best bet is to boot up from your Macs restore disk, and when you get to the installer screen, select disk utility from the menu bar.

Run disk utility,s disk repair and permissions repair functions, then restart to see if that fixes the problem

heh louishen. Thank you for the prompt reply. I tried that but it comes up with an ERROR message at the Disk Utility stage. I'm not sure its finding the HD as it comes up with 2.6 HDD when I have 20Gb and 120 Gb drives on it. I also tried reinstalling the operating system but it doesn't locate either drive for me to select for the instal.

Guess its gonna have to go to a repair outlet.

Reaperman

Just open up the door and check the ATA cables are firmly in-place first

yep! done all that. Have tried taking drive out and refitting. I can only think it is the original drive with the OSon it has gone US. I no longer get the FILE icon now either, just a pale blank screen and the drive trying to whirl up. Guess I might try installing a new HD as the Master and then installing new OS on to it.

Never done that before as I have only installed a slave drive which was very easy. Any tips about installing a new 80Gb Master drive and then formating and installing OS would be very welcome. Can't see it will be that difficult. I have back-ups of files on a 250Gb external drive as well as all my private files on the 160Gb internal slave drive.

Advice very welcome.

Reaperman

Quicksilvers are very easy to change drives on - remove screws and unhook power and IDE cable it it. If you put a new drive in, you should be able to back up with SuperDuper from your external. Here is a link to adding a drive with photos so you can see how to remove original drive.

As a suggestion, drives are very cheap - whack in the largest the machine can accommodate - unlimited or 128GB depending obn the Quicksilver model.

Adding a 2nd IDE hard drive to B&W G3 rev 2 and G4 Mac Systems

Thanks harry b. I've ordered an 80Gb internal drive to replace my original master drive. I have already installed an 120Gb slave in the Mac. All my files are on the 120Gb drive so I only need to instal the OS and I should be up and running again. I just hope I haven't lost any fo my browser, mail settings etc. Will know soon enough.

Thanks again for the help.
Reaperman

Keep us posted mate on your progress!