restoring OS 9.2

My Mac is pretty much null & void as of right now. The Finder keeps quitting and then the whole computer freezes. So I decided to do an install of OS9 again.

I have the software restore cds, all four of them. Along with the install cds for OSX. I don't want to use OSX though since most of the applications that I have, won't work with it. I've followed the pdf that's on the CD1, where it says to reboot in OSX and then open up the .pkg file. I did that, but it wants a password and I don't have one! Then the box says that if I don't have a password, then to use the OSX install cd and I can reset the password from there. However, that doesn't happen since it wants me to restart so that it can start installing OSX.

So since I just want to install OS 9 all over again, is there any way that I can avoid the password thing?

Thanks!
Lindsay

Start up from the OS 9 install CD, in the the first or second window there will be an "Options" button. Select clean install then follow the steps to install OS 9. This will install a new copy of the OS 9 system and disable and archive the old system folder.
Just a note, it helps to include basic computer info such as the model, RAM etc. in the question.

Badger said:

Start up from the OS 9 install CD, in the the first or second window there will be an "Options" button. Select clean install then follow the steps to install OS 9. This will install a new copy of the OS 9 system and disable and archive the old system folder.
Just a note, it helps to include basic computer info such as the model, RAM etc. in the question.

Click to expand...

It's a Power Mac G4. I recently took over the tech help here at my company. With each computer there is a baggie with the cds that Apple sent with each box. This computer has 2 Mac OS X install CDs and 4 Power Mac G4 Software Restore cds (those are not bootable). On those cds it says Mac OS version 9.2.2 which is what I want.

Everytime I booted into OS X and tried to start CD 1 of the Software Restore, it wouldn't start up, said that it had to quit. So I had to re-install OS X (those cds were bootable) and then put in the Software Restore cd after that and it worked. I only had to go through CD 2 of the 4 cds.

Thought, everything is fine. However, when I booted back into OS 9, it still freezes up the OS.

I do have a Mac OS 9 bootable cd but it's the only one for all of the systems here. Why there is only one, I'm confused about that part. But it's also 9.2.1 and not 9.2.2 which is what we are using. And I wanna make sure that there is a seperate boot option into X if I need to do this again since the Software Restore cds said to boot into OS X to start up the cds.

Am I anywhere close here?
And just to let you know, I am much more traverse in PCs than Macs but I'm slowly learning.

Use the 9.2.1 CD. After it is installed you can use live update or download the 9.2.2 update file from Apple. 9.2.2 was a minor update and the 9.2.1 CD was shipped with many models even after 9.2.2 was available. Apple now treats OS 9 as an option and most recent models did not have 9 installed but included the OS 9 CD for the user to install if needed. There's one other way you can try: make a disk image copy of the OS 9 system folder on similar computer and burn the image to a CD. On the problematic G4 drag the OS 9 system folder to the trash. Insert the CD you made, open the disk image and drag the "new" OS 9 system folder onto the hard disk. You'll have a bootable OS 9 system and a system backup on CD. The drawback is that you don't always get the registration files for applications so make sure you have serial numbers available.