Very Strange System Problem... Any Ideas???

T

thetatorment

Registered
first off, this is my first post in this forum/community. a dear friend reffered me here. i don't know how this site has eluded me 'till now. but glad i finally found it.
Anyways, my problem is causing me to pull out my hair, and goes like this:after all kinds of erradic behavior, and finally constant crashing, despite several permissions fixing, it was time to do a clean OS install on my wife's machine (G3 B/W 400Mhz 832 Mb RAM, 10 GB original western digital, 80 GB new Maxtor internal HD's). now both harddrives have Panther on them (10.3.7). However, i use the 10 Gig as Startup/System drive and the much faster Maxtor 80Gig (w/ 8MB cache) for files and to work off of. the problem is i can't get a new OS X install to go on this disk. using Disk Utility, i first did disk first aid, which says the disk is fine. then i erased it (using the "zero out all data" option). but everytime i start up from the OS X install CD the install hangs at exactly "Base System Part 2 44%". the log says: root_bootstrap_look_up(): unknown error code
root: Allocated 8192K for journal file.
ERROR: Could not read archive file - pax: End of archive volume 1
reached-
ERROR: Could not write file - pax: WARNING! These patterns were
not matched-
whatever that means. i then i try and boot up from the maxtor harddrive (which boots and runs fine) and thru Disk utility try and do a restore using the good system on Maxtor disk as source to copy to the empty 10 Gig. but after about 3% of the copy i get an "Restore Failed-lost connection with helper utility" message. then i've even just tried to manually "select all" of the files on the Maxtor's system partition and drag/drop copy all the OS X to the 10 Gig in the finder (just a normal copying of files) and that quits also.
Plus, just to be sure the drive hasn't gone bad, i do a complete test using all of TechTool Pro 4.03 's drive tests- the drive passes every test fine with no errors or problems detected. so i'm at a complete loss as to how i can get a OS X back on this drive. any input/ ideas???
 
Could it be a cabling problem? IDE cables are very fussy about cabling - the blue connector attaches to the host motherboard, grey connector in the middle of the cable goes to any slave drive, black connector at the opposite end from the blue connector and goes to the master drive. And make sure the drives are jumpered accordingly (one as master, one as slave, not using cable select - that's been known to cause problems also)

The error codes
ERROR: Could not read archive file - pax: End of archive volume 1
reached-
ERROR: Could not write file - pax: WARNING! These patterns were
not matched-
Could come from a bad CD; but that wouldn't account for the failures to do a simple HD to HD copy - that's why I wonder about the cabling.
 
i'll pop the machine open and check, but if it was a cabling problem then the drive wouldn't mount on desktop, and test out all okay thru techtool and disk utility would it? and i know it's not the cd. i've used it to install on this machine before, plus my g4 with no previous problems. and jumpers are set fine, no cable select. but thanks for the ideas. please keep em/ coming! i would like to try and see if i can install on the drive (via cd or HD to HD copy) by removing it from the G3 and putting it in my g4 for a minute. but i don't want it to screw with my G4, it's my old trusted workhorse.
 
first off, thanks a ton for helping me out so far guys! really cool of 'ya. i checked and my jumpers and cable are all set/connected okay. and as far as the 8 GB limit goes, thanks for that tip. i'm not sure though, since my original few OS X (10.1,10.2,10.3,10.3.5) all installed and worked fine. but i'll give repartitioning and installing again while observing that limit a shot. i'm burnt for the night. i'll try in the morning and see what happens. thanks again!
 
well, i tried seperating the drive into 2 partitions of 6, 3.5 GB but the installer still hangs in exact same spot with same message in log. and HD to HD copy still wont work.
 
Do you possibly have a PCI SCSI adapter card installed? If so, try removing that and run the install again. Some B&W G3s do not behave well with lots of memory. Some have luck by removing memory except for 256MB. Reinstall cards and memory after your install is successful. If this works by pulling cards, why would it have worked OK before ?? (don't know the answer to that one) Maybe you have not done a complete clean install before this.
 
Also, try making a bootable copy of your OS X install CD (use Disk Utility to make a CD/DVD master image, then burn with Disk Utility). I was one of the unlucky few who received damaged Jaguar CDs (looking at the data side of the CD, it was apparent that the CD was damaged) and simply making a copy of the CD allowed a flawless installation.
 
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