Bricked? by Software Update

I've been running a G3 iMac on OSX 3.9 (the last version compatible with the architecture) - I recently had to replace the hard drive, but since then it's been doing okay. It's increasingly unable to cope with a lot of stuff on the internet thanks to its 400MHz processor and incompatibility with recent versions of Flash, but it's still fine for graphics and print design work which is its #1 function. Or it was.

I recently had to replace the hard drive, which went smoothly enough, but last night I got a Software Update notification which included patches to 3.9 itself... On restarting the computer, though, it now gets as far as the apple logo and pinwheel and just sits there, spinning away...

Anyone know what's up? Am I going to have to wipe and reinstall everything again?

Am I going to have to wipe and reinstall everything again?

Click to expand...

If you didn't make a backup prior to updating, it looks like that might be the only way. You may on a long shot, be able to boot up in Safe Boot mode and remove the update manually and then try a restart. Not easy to do that, however.