Boot Problem

E

EthicalEditor

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While troubleshooting an issue on my Apple Power Macintosh G4 933 running OS 9 (need to use OS9 for my specific software application, I cannot use OS X), I held down the x key while rebooting, based on some bad advice. Now my machine is trying to boot in OS X, and I can't seem to convince it otherwise. I have zapped the PRAM and verified the disk in target disk mode from another machine. When I hold option while booting to select the boot drive, it is showing my hard drive with the X symbol. I seem to have misplaced my OS 9 install CD, though I see it can be downloaded from Apple's support site. Before I go through that process, is there a way to undo having held down the X while I booted? If I do have to download OS 9 from Apple, is there any special considerations I need to take into account when I burn the CD? Thanks in advance!

“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics”
-Albert Einstein
 
Update - I found a 5 CD system restore, booted with it, but the only option it gives me is a full erase disc and restore - really not what I want to do. Again, I just want the boot process to stop seeing the drive as an OSX drive. Any thoughts are appreciated!

“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics”
-Albert Einstein
 
You may be able to hold the number 9 to boot into OS 9, but I'm not sure if it will work.
Anyway:
Continue to boot into OS X
Open System Preferences, then Startup Disk.
Choose your OS 9 startup from that pane.
That will do it...!
 
I'm not sure 10 was ever officially installed on this machine- when I try to boot it, it just hangs forever on a spinning disc. I'm probably going to reinstall OS 9. I had made a clone of the drive, so my data is pretty much backed up.
 
Before wiping the machine, try holding down the 'option' key at startup. This will present you with icons of ALL bootable volumes on the computer -- you may be able to select the OS 9 volume, boot, then reset the "Startup Disk" control panel back to the OS 9 volume.

If that doesn't work, you can try resetting the open-firmware by booting into open firmware (hold command-option-o-f at boot), then typing the following commands (followed by ENTER after each):
Code: 
reset-nvram
reset-all

If that doesn't work, a PRAM reset might (hold command-option-p-r at boot and keep held down through 3 restart "chimes"), followed by holding 'option' at boot to select a startup volume.

If that works, all should be well.

If not, well, now you're back to wherever you were before. Trying the above options should take no more than 10 minutes, so I believe they're worth a try before settling on something drastic.
 
I've now done all of the above, up to and including the software restore (yes, I performed the PRAM and open firmware reset as detailed above). My restore was from a 10.1.3/9.2.2 install series, so actually I must have OS X on the system, however it is still sitting indefinitely on the spinning disc screen (older looking spinning beach ball in the top left corner of the screen over the grayish white mac solid color background). So this is a freshly installed OS on the drive, but the symptoms are exactly the same. I'd love to call it a loss and upgrade to a modern system, but that's a no-go. Is thtis all because I held down the x while booting? Can that be reversed some other way?

“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics”
-Albert Einstein
 
EDCC's hint about the Option key won't help too much if the systems are on the same partition, which is likely.

How long is 'forever' or indefinitely? Did you wait as long as 20 minutes? A first boot to OS X might take a considerable amount of time, but 20-30 minutes is as long as I would wait.
 
Yes, they are on the same partition. I gave it 30 minutes with out any success.

“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics”
-Albert Einstein
 
Bad logic board maybe? I just replaced one in my Macbook Pro.

“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics”
-Albert Einstein
 
Naah, doesn't seem like a bad logic board. Doesn't seem hardware-related at all. The system is just confused about where to boot from for one reason or another (which is very, very unlikely hardware-related). From your description, it sounds like the computer wants to boot into the OS X installation on the drive, and said OS X installation is somehow "bad" (missing kext, invalid install, missing kernel something-or-anothers, etc.).

If you wish to rid the entire hard drive of all operating systems and load from scratch, then instead of simply erasing the existing partition on the drive, you may need to perform a repartition of the drive. This can be done via Disk Utility with Mac OS X, or (I think) Drive Setup under OS 9.

Of course, none of this will help if you can't boot from anything other than the hard drive. In that case, it may be prudent to yank the drive, install it into another Mac, repartition the drive there, reinstall in the original machine and reinstall whatever operating system you need.
 
I'm going to go ahead and reformat from a OS X machine via target disk mode, but I'm not sure which format I should use: Mac journaled or the variations of that. Again, this is for a reinstall of OS 9. Also, I don't particularly want to make a OS X partition of the drive, we only use OS 9 on the machine. I don't know if that matters, but I thought I would add that info. So any thoughts regarding which format... ?
 
I would use "Mac OS (Extended)" and elect to install OS 9 drivers (should be a checkbox near the format pull-down).

I would also set the partition format to "APM" or "APT" or "Apple Partition Map" in the "Options" dialog.

Mac OS 9 doesn't understand "Journaled" (or, rather, cannot use journaling -- not sure if formatting as a journaled filesystem would have an effect on that), nor were there any OS 9 machines that used the GUID partition format (all OS 9 machines are PowerPC machines and therefore use "APM" or "Apple Partition Map" partition schemes).

Ideally, an OS 9 disk should be formatted by Drive Setup using OS 9. Not sure the level of success you'll have trying to prepare a disk for OS 9 using OS X utilities, but it should work (in theory!).
 
When I try to startup, the normal light grey screen with the darker grey Apple Logo in the middle has 'inverted' itself somewhat. The light grey background becomes an ugly blue, the same blue seen on the Windows 'Blue Screen of Death' and the Apple becomes the lighter grey of the former background.
broadband settings
 
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