WARNING: How to avoid formatting your HD

alexachucarro

alexachucarro

I'm 1/4 Basque you know?...
Whatever you do NEVER choose a resolution that is too high for your monitor in OS X. I did it and there was NO way round the fact that I had to reinstall OS X.

I had OS9 on an HFS+ partition and 10.1 on a UFS partition. I set the res too high for me monitor and the screen went blank saying input signal too high. Well if you very jammy (lucky) you can click blindly around the screen until you choose a res that's lower. Otherwise you're buggered.

After calling Apple (over 2 weeks ago), they come back about once every 5 days with 'soultions' that wouldn't work: from OS 9, go into the OS X partition/library/prefs etc. Oh nom OS 9 can't see UFS. So just be very careful who uses your Mac. I have subsequently removed the Menu icon for Res from the finder.And warned family about it. I just reinstalled OSX, i had had the G4 for abotu a day!

But please beware. MAybe post other warnings that OS X has. They should have a 15 second trial before comiting in the Monitors preference. Apple WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Originally posted by alexachucarro
Whatever you do NEVER choose a resolution that is too high for your monitor in OS X. I did it and there was NO way round the fact that I had to reinstall OS X.
Click to expand...

What resolution did you set to?

I set 1600x1200 @85Hz with my G4 and the Apple 21" Graphite Studio Display (which highest is 1600x1200 anyway) and I have no problem....
 
Leonis, My B&W G3 will go up to 1920x1080 with the stock Rage 128 and 17" Studio Display... I'm pretty sure yours would do that also. But that's beside the point I guess.
 
every monitor has limitations. you have a 21" THEREFORE you can go to a higher res. Via the control panel if you choose the highest res (so that the refresh rate sets to 75Hz) then click on the bar up to 85Hz, trust me, your screen will go blank.

I have a 19" and my monitors highest settign at 85 Hz is 1280x1024 ( i hate 75 Hz - it buzzes my eyes)

but there is a way around it. i have discovered:

Boot up and hold down COMMAND (Apple) + "S"
into Single User mode, type:

mount -uw /

Then type:

rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist

Then type

reboot


But don't mess about with this mode as you can really bollocks up your system!
 
a good way to change the Hz rate on my Sony 19" (E400). The PCs seem to get better and higher rates at 1280 x 1024? I only get 85hz (which is okay, but I don't wanna be outdone by those losers!)
 
alexachucarro:

I think the thing that would ultimately prevent this is not formatting with the UFS file system. Because 1) Mac OS 9 cannot recognize it, 2) it still has quirks with OS X, 3) you can experience lots of oddities with UFS formatted drives under OS X, and 4) OS X is very slow on UFS formatted drives, it's just not worth it at all to go to UFS. I don't even think there are any benefits over HFS+.

So what I would recommend is that people use HFS+ formatted hard drives rather than UFS. That would allow OS 9 to help solve the problem, and ultimately prevent your reinstallation of OS X.
 
It's silly not to have a "can you see this" confirmation (ala Classic MacOS), but I can only assume Apple will add one at some point (sooner, please!).

For reference, there is in fact a TIL that gives the same solution alexachucarro suggested, for those who can't delete the file via Classic. At least there is a fix (oddly enough, when I did this to myself, I tried manually editing the plist file in Classic with BBEdit before searching elsewhere for solutions, and that didn't do anything... huh.).
 
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