screwed up imac 17 inch

M

mathman

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I have a 17 inch imac g4/800/512 running jaguar.

I know German, so I thought it would be interesting to have my stuff in German, so I went into System Preferences, then into International, and picked up the German and put it into first place, ahead of English.

A little later, I had a system freeze, and rebooted.

When I rebooted, everything seemed normal, but then the screen went gray, and there was nothing on the desktop. In the menu bar, there was just the time and date, and the speaker icon.

I went to the dock and clicked on "Systemeinstellungen" (German for System Preferences). No window opened, but some stuff appeared on the menu bar at the top of the screen. But I could not open up anything involving system preferences. All my applications seem to work, but I have to access them through "recent applications," or through the dock.

How do I get my machine back to the way it was before my ill-advised foray? I tried booting from the System X install disk, and from Norton Works (which says there is nothing wrong with my computer).

I called apple support, and they tried a number of things (zapping the pram, starting with extensions off, and so on), but nothing seems to work. They suggest that I reinstall X with archiving, but tell me that this means I will have to reinstall all my third party software, which I am loathe to do.

As you can probably tell, I am not a total neophyte, but evidently know just enough to get myself in trouble.

Any ideas? Thanks

mark
 
If you can still access the Terminal, you can edit the file /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist (note the . before GlobalPreferences.plist).

Change the order of the AppleLanguages key, and put English at the top of the list.

(If you haven't edited files with the Terminal before, pico is probably the easiest)

You'll need to be root to do this - if you enabled the root account, then use su, and if you haven't, then type sudo pico /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist.

If you can boot up in OS 9, you can edit the file that way, too.
 
if you reinstall with archiving, you do not have to reinstall your third party software. you do, however, have to reinstall prefpanes and the such AFAIK.
 
I'd like to try using terminal (never done it before, but WTF...). But I don't know how to access terminal. I tried using Mac Help, but when I click on "open terminal for me," it comes back with something about this not being available/not installed. Is there a way of starting up in terminal?

And to "boi," isn't it obvious that I'm better than you at breaking macs? ;<]

Thanks to both of you.

mark
 
mathman - try booting up in single user mode. Hold down Command (open apple) and S while the computer is booting. This will drop you into the console - nothing but words, no GUI ;)

First thing you'll need to do is type mount -uw / - this will mount your root drive as read/write. Then try editing the file like I said in my last post. When you're done, type exit, and that'll start OS X booting up normally. Note that you don't need to type su or sudo - you're effectively the root user when you boot into single user mode.
 
Darkshadow:
Originally posted by Darkshadow
mathman - try booting up in single user mode. Hold down Command (open apple) and S while the computer is booting. This will drop you into the console - nothing but words, no GUI ;)

First thing you'll need to do is type mount -uw / - this will mount your root drive as read/write. Then try editing the file like I said in my last post. When you're done, type exit, and that'll start OS X booting up normally. Note that you don't need to type su or sudo - you're effectively the root user when you boot into single user mode.
Click to expand...

Ok, I tried that. I get the following:

Singleuser boot --fsck not done
Root device is mounted read-only
If you want to make modifications to files run '/sbin/fsck -y' and then '/sbin/mount -uw/'

It then gives me sh-2.05a#

So I typed the first sbin thing, and it checked a bunch of stuff, and said that the "volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK." (hah!)

I then typed the mount thing, and then what you suggested: pico/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist (I made sure to type the period in front of the G) and hit return.

It came back with no such file or directory.

I typed exit, it said logout, and after a bunch of stuff went past on the screen, it popped me back into startup, and into the same state as before.

I am sure that this is getting way more involved than you probably had intended, so if you don't have time to help any further, just let me know.

mark
 
Make sure there is a space between "pico" (a UNIX text editor) and "/Library..." (the directory to your file), else you will confuse the computer. If you want to reinstall the system, select the option that will archive your old system and install the OS afresh, and see if it will let you install in German instead of English.
 
Thanks arden (and apologies to darkshadow for not following his/her directions correctly). I did forget the space. That worked, but when I get into the xml stuff, the AppleLanguages key only has:

array
string English /string
/array

(I am leaving off the angle brackets, since those are, evidently, commands)

and then goes on to list a bunch of colorsync devices, printers, energy saver prefs, and so on. German (or Deutsch) appears nowhere, so I am at a loss as to what to do.

I think this is approaching recreational brain surgery, and that is probably unwise. Unless one of you has a *perfect* idea of what I should do, maybe it is best that I do the archive and install suggested by Apple support.

I thank you all for your time.

mark
 
Hmm...try editing the file /Users/your_user_name/Library/Preference/.GlobalPreferences.plist then...it may be there that you need to change it at.

And it is "him", not "her" :p
 
So I type pico (space) /Users/.... ? I will try that.

I really do appreciate the time you all are taking with this. I can handle quantum field theory just fine, but am dangerous around computers.

mark
 
Originally posted by mathman
I really do appreciate the time you all are taking with this. I can handle quantum field theory just fine, but am dangerous around computers.
Click to expand...
So what do you think/know about quantum-based computing?
 
Not much. But if they ever get it working, it will blow the doors off a lot of stuff, like cryptography. If you're interested, Scientific American had an article on this in the last year, I think pretty recently.

mark
 
Yeah, it's one of my interests, but quantum physics has taken a back seat to everything else in my life. Ever read Timeline?
 
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