What is going on?

Perseus

Perseus

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What is going on with my G4? I recently hooked up an EZQuest CD burner. I don't remember what happened in between, but what I do remember is that I was trying to install Warcraft III. I have 28 gigs available on my HD, but for some reason the installer said there was no space available!!! Then for some reason, I turned off the G4 (running Jaguar) off by pressing the power button. When I started up again, I got the blinkining question mark/happy mac face (folder icon). And now my computer won't get past this point. I tried calling Apple, I told them I don't have AppleCare, well I couldnt anyway, my G4 is three years old! My main problem is that I don't have the OS CDs on me too boot up with. All I have is an OLD Powermac 6500 OS 8.0 bootable CD. Anything I can do?????
 
Boot up holding alt (option), that'll force your mac to check out all of its System folders. Tell us what happens.
 
Boot into verbose mode (Cmd-V) and tell us what the UNIX underpinnings say.
 
If it's got the blinking question mark, Arden, it's not getting that far at all. The OS is not finding a valid system to boot from, so no booting has taken place.
 
RPS, when I held down option, I got two things that look like buttons, one looks like a refresh button (semi-circle arrow) and anotehr button with an arrow pointing right. WHat do thse mean and what should I do next??
 
You mean there is no button like thing that says Mac OS X underneath it? Try to click refresh and try again. If that doesn't work, there really isn't a working System Folder to boot up from.. Try starting up and holding command+p+r, until you hear 3 chimes, then let go of the buttons, maybe that'll work. If that doesn't work either, you could have some bad ram installed. If you have any external ram, I suggest you should take it out and see if that changes anything, if it does, throw out that ram and buy new ram. Otherwise, I suggest you do an archive and install..:(
 
When you turned off the computer by pressing the power key instead of shutting down properly by selecting either "Restart" or "Shutdown" from the Apple menu, you probably corrupted some essential system files.

OS X and Unix are picky about how they want to be shut down. Just as there is a method to boot up the system, there is a method to shut down the system. The system loads up files when it starts up, and, in a way, needs to "unload" those files when it shuts down -- when you shut down by killing the power, or pressing the power button, you skip the shutdown sequence that the OS needs to go through, and files can get messed up and your system can get hosed.

You will need some sort of OS X boot disk. If you bought the computer legitimately, you should have those disks somewhere. If you bought it second-hand, you need to purchase OS X separately. You will need an OS X disk to get this machine going again, unless you can run Norton Disk Doctor or Diskwarrior or something like that on the drive and repair it.
 
Reset the PRAM. Oh yeah I forgot about running the Disk Utilities like Norton and Diskwarrior like ElDiabloConCaca said.(I recommend Diskwarrior.)
 
If I boot from the OS X Cds, do you think I can go into System Preferences to check the startup disk? Would this solve it? Right now I don't have the CDs on me.
 
No, you can't access apps from the X cd's.. That was left behind in 9, dunno why though, it was real useful..
 
Yeah holding option forces to find System folders. Holding x forces to boot into X, but clearly you have a corrupt drive. Did you try Diskwarrior? It could fix your problem.
 
Ok, I finally found my cds, the osx install 1, os x install 2, and developer tools. Which CD do I boot from? What button do I hold down when I start up?
 
Insert Disc 1 and hold the C (for CD!) key.

BTW: Cmd-P-R does nothing. You need to hold Option as well to zap the PRAM.
 
So I have to reinstall the system software? Would this erase everything else on my hard drive? Because this is just an install disk, I can't even access system preferences when I start up using disk 1.
 
Tell us:
1.) did you zap the PRAM?
2.) did you try discwarrior?
3.) do you have any RAM in your system beside what came with it origionally? If so, try taking the extra stuff out after shutting the power off, and then re-booting.
4.) archive and install (see below)

A complete re-install should be your last option, though there is a different feature called "archive and install" on the disk that lets you simply reinstall the OSX structure but leaves your personal files alone. Try that.
 
Ok, I fixed the problem. I had to do a combination of people's suggestions. I had a blinking question mark/mac os logo over a folder when I started up. To fix it, I had to start up from my OS X install CD, run disk utility and repair the HD. Then, I had to restart the computer holding down X, so that the comp would be forced to start up in OS X. That's all I needed to do, and now my comp is fixed!! :) The problem orginally occurred when I accidentally turned of the mac with the power button while running X.
 
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