eMac - OS X stops loading and goes to Darwin BSD

[mpb79]

I recently was given an eMac G4 (1GHz/256MB/80GB/SuperDrive) from a friend's dad who owns a graphic design company. He was upgrading his computers, and giving away the old ones. From what I see it's running version 10.3.9 of Panther.

When I boot up the computer...

I see the gray apple logo screen - It goes to the OS X progress bar and gets about halfway - then goes to Darwin BSD.

I was able to trouble shoot as far as getting to the Welcome screen, where you register a new account. Once I finish and continue, it begins loading OS X again, but runs into the exact same issue of defaulting to Darwin and asking me to login.

I have done a SystemStarter check in Darwin (in safe/single-user mode) and it seems to stall at AppleFileServer. It says it's trying to connect to AppleFileServer about six or seven times, then says it is unable to connect. Could this be the problem?

Not knowing anything about eMacs, I would appreciate any help. Also, to add insult to injury, I do not have the OS X discs and neither does the guy I got the mac from. Is this something I would be able to troubleshoot without the OS disks?

Thanks in advance for your help!

-Michael

 

[jbarley]

Have you tried starting in Safe mode (not single-user)
Press and hold the Shift key during bootup, will normally start in safe mode (OS X with bare necessities minus most drivers and addons), this just might get you past the AppleFileServer issue.