Reinstalling Tiger

I just bought a used PowerBook G4. It was cheap so I figured it would make for a good starter Mac Well I've learned a few things about it and now I need help! I want a fresh start...Total reinstall (My name's not Dexter **** it(old owner)). That's where the problems start. My buddy says "The disk won't mount and let me install Tiger because it's hanging up, and he can't repair the file system through the OS because it's unix based"
My Mac buddy in town took a look at it and tried to do a little somp-somp with it and tells me this: The old owner upgraded from to OSX, not a fresh install and left all the old junk on there. He also has the file system set to unix based. When my buddy tried booting from his Tiger Cd the screen goes black and says it's hanging up (it's so cool that it actually says that on the screen too!!!) I would gladly try and get it to do so again and post the reason for diag. purposes if someone needs me too, just tell me how to make it boot from cd. He did get it to boot off the Lepard disk but when he went to the disk menu to do what he needed to do it wouldn't let him do jack, all it showed was the type, size and My Mac. It wouldn't let us erase it though. Any advice to avoid a trip to the nearest Mac repair center(about an hour and a half away)

You will need to get hold of a full install Tiger DVD, the black colored discs and don't buy a grey one, boot with the disc in by holding down 'C", then go to Utilities>Disk Utility and format the hard drive. From your description friend may have been using a model specific Tiger DVD. If that won't work try booting in target disc mode.

May well be an idea to zero the driver, then a clean Tiger install, connect to the 'net and update the software.

im kind of having the same problem as mullermaster but i bought mine new about 2 years ago. But what is happening is that every time i restart my mac it goes to the boot screen. And i have the main disks but its not letting me do the holding key c down as i reboot. So i ask for anybody's help. Also if i type in "mac-boot" it works but it frustrating to keep on doing this, help me please.

Thank you very much, I'll try that within the next couple of days.

slacker id you go to System Preferences, then to Startup Disk, what is highlighted? Should be something like 'X.4.11 on Mac HDD'.