Mac G4 wont start up....?

N

NickBurns

Mac Abuser
Hey guys,

I noticed my G4 500 was running a bit slow, so i booted from my Nortons CD and ran Norton disk doctor/speed disk (I do this all the time with no issues) It said it found severe damage, but all was fixed. I then went to restart from the Osx hard drive, and now i get this error:

/etc/master.password: Not a directory
/etc/master.password: Not a directory
/etc/master.password: Not a directory
-sh: /etc/profile: Not a directory
-sh-2.05b#


I am definately not a Mac guru, but I have been doing this same thing for over 5 years, with no issues. I am stumped. This makes absolutely no sense to me...

I searched and saw that people recommended booting from the OSX cd and using disk utility. Well i cant figure out how to boot from the cd. I put it in, and restart holding the 'c' button. It then prompts the OSX install. So i select quit from the install menu, select startup disk from the drop down menu, select the OSX cdrom, and then it restarts and goes back to trying to install?

WOW this is dumb. Has anyone else ran into these issues?

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks
 
NickBurns said:
... people recommended booting from the OSX cd and using disk utility. Well i cant figure out how to boot from the cd. I put it in, and restart holding the 'c' button. It then prompts the OSX install. So i select quit from the install menu, select startup disk from the drop down menu, select the OSX cdrom, and then it restarts and goes back to trying to install?
Click to expand...

You are quitting too soon...
Boot to the installer CD, and get to the first installer screen. Choose Disk Utility from one of the menus at the top of the screen - either the Installer menu (on older OS X versions) or the Utilities menu on the newer versions.
You can check your hard drive, but the boot that you have now probably just needs a reinstall of OS X, and you should then click the Options button on the screen where you select the drive for installation. Choose the Archive and Install option....
 
I recommend not using Norton ANYTHING on your Mac in the future. Norton Utilities hasn't supported Mac OS X for some years now, so it will do more harm than good. If you need a good disk utility other than the Disk Utility, there's TechTool Pro and DiskWarrior. Stay as FAAAR away from Norton as possible.
 
Thanks a lot guys,....

I ended up doing what Delta Mac suggestd, And all is good. Now i have the 'previous system folder' on my hard drive, do i still need that?

I promise i will never use Nortons again....LOL I will check out the others you mentioned nixgeek...

Thanks again guys....
 
Does anybody know if i need to keep the 'previous system folder' ? Im not sure if it has anything in it i will need...All my programs seem to work fine?

Thanks again,
 
Keep it there for a while before getting rid of it. You could also try moving it to another drive or to a USB stick if it's not that large and see what happens. Don't delete it until you're completely sure that it's not needed (although I don't think it is needed anymore).
 
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