mac mini problems HELP!!!!

alright my 1.25ghz HDD crashed and im trying to reboot from an OSX disk. the issue is i can't get the computer to recognize the start up disk.

1. I've tried leaving the crashed drive in the computer and rebooting and the only thing that happens is the apple icon comes up on the screen and than nothing.

2. I tried taking the crashed drive out and rebooting from the disk to just see if i can get the computer to recognize the disk. I get the kernal panic mode thing.

3. my final option is to see if i can install OSX on an external drive and reboot from that. i don't know how to partition the drive to work with a g4 and not intel.

but my main issue is the mini mac won't boot from disk. i've tried every option and still nothing. the combo drive is spinning the disk and reading it. but the computer won't boot from it. any ideas?

What OS disk are you trying to boot from:

- what OS version is the disk?
- what color is the disk (gray, black, white)?
- if gray...did this disk come with the computer originally?

If it's a gray disk...and it did not come with the computer originally...then it won't work. Gray disks are model specific...and most likely...the gray disk you have isn't for a 1.25ghz G4 Mac-Mini.

HTH,

- Nick