iMac G3 won't boot to OS

R

Rachyl

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Hi guys, I have an older iMac G3 with a 450 mHz processor, 256 mb RAM, and a 20 gb HD running Panther. I was getting ready to give it to a friend this weekend and thought I would get on it one last time. It was working great until today when I went to boot it up, I got a grey screen with a purple folder in the middle with that infamous question mark. I tried zapping the PRAM, but that didn't help. Any advice or help I can get I would greatly appreciate. Thanks so much,
Rachyl
 
It sounds as if your system can't find it's own start-up drive. Try booting from a system CD (holding down the "C" key on startup to force it to boot from that CD), then try to use the system utilities to select the orginal hard drive as the startup drive. Then re-boot.
 
Thanks, but I tried all that. I ended up having to wipe the harddrive and place Panther back onto it and its up and working like new again. I tried to have that Panther disk repair it, but it was all corrupted. I am just happy its up and running again.
 
I'd check the disk from time to time. Worst case scenario: The harddrive is dying a slow death and will at one point no longer run at all and need replacement. Positive side: You'll buy a cheap and much larger harddrive and breathe some new life into that iMac. However, I hear that replacing harddrives in those iMacs is a little more complicated than in a PowerMac.
 
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