cd eject on startup and flashing question mark

R

rekt5782

Registered
i have an emac 1.25ghz g4 with a superdrive that i'm trying to upgrade to 10.4. but everytime i try to boot from the dvd it spits it out after the chime so i can't successfully boot to the 10.4 dvd. after it spits the dvd out, it goes to the grey screen with the folder that has the flashing question mark(but it goes away after a few seconds). i've tried booting to my disk warrior cd also to run a disk repair, but it spits every disk out when you try to boot to it.
i'm pretty sure i can buy a 5.25" firewire enclosure and put a spare dvd-rom drive in it and do everything from there, but i'd like to try to fix this without spending any money.

thanks for any help or ideas.
 
What discs are you using? Are these the official upgrade/full installation discs for Tiger, or are these the solid colored discs for another Mac that have a Tiger installation? The retail versions have a huge "X" plastered in the background of the disc label, while the ones that come shipped with Macs are a solid color and are meant solely for those Macs.

BTW, what version of Mac OS X were you running originally? If this is an upgrade disc, I believe you have to have 10.3 installed for that to work. The full installation can upgrade from whichever version, as well as on a clean system without an OS.
 
i am using the official ugrade/install dvd that i bought from a computer store. and i am running version 10.3.9. so i know i should be able to upgrade without a problem. the real issue i'm having right now is that whenever i try to boot from a cd/dvd my computer spits the disc out. it will read them fine from within the os though. and i would like to run disk warrior from the cd so i can hopefully get rid of the flashing question mark screen (which i just noticed happens for a few seconds everytime i restart), but i can't because it won't boot to the cd.
 
Sounds like you have the upgrade disc and not the full installation disc which can do both a clean install and an upgrade. I haven't ever used the upgrade disc onnly so I can't be too sure, but from the fact that it's not bootable I'm deducing that this is the upgrade only, which means you might have to do it from within 10.3.9. In other words, you won't be able to boot from it since that would mean having the ability to format the drive and perform a fresh install which isn't possible on the upgrade disc but is on the full install disc. Hence, I am deducing this isan upgrade only disc which will only work once the currently installed OS is running.

Anyone else think I'm right/wrong on this? Please share your thoughts.
 
written on the disk:
"Mac OS X Tiger
Includes Xcode 2
Install DVD
Version 10.4.3"

and then the right side has the copyright info.


the problem i am having (and i'm nearly 100% sure) has nothing to do with the install dvd. especially since, as i've mentioned before, whenever i try to boot to ANY cd or dvd my computer spits it out. it doesn't matter if i'm trying to upgrade my os, or run a diagnostics/repair program from a cd.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top