OS X / OS 9 booting trouble

J

jp_tix

Guest
Hi,

I'm using OS X 10.2.? on a Blue/White G3. I recently came home from a vacation and to my suprise the machine started OS 9.2 when I turned on the machine. I changed that back to the OS X folder in the Startup Disk control panel, and everything worked ok. It's described here

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106389

(no question mark for me though)

Today it unexpectedly started in OS 9 again, except this time it froze at the "Starting up..." screen.
It didn't actually freeze, I could move the mouse, but the cursor turned into a bomb and the progress bar stopped before loading any extensions. I tried restarting, emptying the PRAM with Command+Option+P+R AND in the OpenFirmware, no luck. Popped in my OS 9 system cd, and it still
wouldn't boot. Stopped in the exactly same place, but the cursor didn't turn into a bomb this time.

Is this a hardware error?
Any ideas?

I'm desperate since the machine is useless right now.
A possible workaround would be making the machine boot OS X instead from the OpenFirmware, if that's possible.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best,

jp
 
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Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Pro 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo 4GB RAM OS 10.5.2
Im not sure about your problem, so hopefully someone else can help you, but do not cross post please. Your other posts have been removed and this will be where this thread will stay. Thanks!
 
OP
J

jp_tix

Guest
sorry for the cross-post...

problem update:

i was able to boot OS X by typing "boot hd:7,\\:tbxd" or something similar (can't remember exactly) in open firmware

it boots terribly slow - stays at the first grey screen with the apple logo and the spinning thing on the bottom for a looong time

os x loads ok, but when i connect my external firewire HD and iPod they doesn't appear in Finder or iTunes (or Diskwarrior/the apple disk utility)

when i think about it, that happened just before the machine suddenly
decided to start up in OS 9.

the FW devices and cables are all good. the iPod also gets charged.

i haven't tried a restart yet to see if it boots OS X or OS 9.

what's happening? how can i make FW work?
 
Joined
Jun 11, 2003
Messages
4,915
Reaction score
68
Points
48
Location
Mount Vernon, WA
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Pro 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo 4GB RAM OS 10.5.2
Do you have Panther? I am thinking that you might need to do a backup and then reinstall your OS.

I would wait until someone else that might have had this problem responds though.. That's just what I would do if I was having problems like that.
 
OP
J

jp_tix

Guest
Murlyn said:
Do you have Panther? I am thinking that you might need to do a backup and then reinstall your OS.

i'm running 10.2.8. sounds like a good idea, except i can't find those cds. argh.
 
OP
B

bkjproductions

Guest
I had a similar problem just today, which I thought was a mite suspicious. I'm not running OS-X, though, just 9.2

Here's what happened to me.
I attached a Powerbook G3 which had been booted in "firewire hard drive mode" by holding down the T key, meaning that it would behave as if it were a regular firewire drive. I transferred some files to my desktop Blue G3, and then dismounted the drive, and disconnected it. Then I plugged back in my Sony DVD burner (DRX-530UL) via Firewire, and tried to burn a CD. It failed, and since I had been running a lot of applications, I restarted the Blue G3. Then it never really started... a couple of times I got the occasional message that Disk FirstAid wanted to do its thing, but the progress bar for the actuall boot only made it half an inch, cursor became the beachball, and eventually the bomb cursor (which was weird, since I'm more accustomed to a bomb icon if I'm going to get that).

I tried booting from CD and that didn't work either; I could tell the CD was starting to boot, but the same thing: progress bar only 1/2" and then nothing happening.

I saw another URL somewhere (maybe Macintouch.com?) that cited usb devices as culprits in a similar situation, so I disconnected the DVD burner, and it booted.

I checked my RAM also, thinking that might have been the problem. For some reason one chip of 256MB showed up as only being 128MB, so maybe that was the problem, because now I can boot with the DVD burner attached or not.

Hope this helps somehow!
 

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