apple guys - help osx hard crash

[laxplayer39]

hey whats goin on guys

well i sold that old powerbook i got and recently just got a ibook (933 14") and in trying to replace my system and user files i deleted them and tried to replace them - however, i know i messed up and when i try booting up my mac it goes through a bunch of lines of script then it says "panic ... were hangin here".

in the background it has the apple watermark "please power off your computer hold the power button or press the restart key (where is the restart key??)" ...

I have the osx install disks (2 discs) AND i have the ibook software restore discs too (3 discs)...

what do i need to do to get it up and running again? I dont really care about the files on it (i have everything backed up on dvds).

thanks guys

lets see who wins tonight!! hah!

 

[n0cmonkey]

If you don't want to try and fix the problem, you can reinstall OS X. Put the install disc in the drive, press the power button, and hold the "c" key. That should, IIRC, boot from the cdrom drive.

 

[laxplayer39]

ive been holding hte c key when the osx install disk 1 is in ... the apple logo coms up it works fine for a lil while

but then the background image gets blurry and it has the message "you need to restart your computer. hold down the power button for several seconds or press the restart button"

i dunno - i have the software system restore disks as well

any ideas?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Try the system restore discs. I haven't had to reload OS X in a long time...

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Constant kernal panics like those are usually caused by bad RAM. I suspect bad memory, because you cant boot off the cd. Have you installed any memory? If so, remove it, and leave the memory that was already installed, and try booting up to see if the problem persists.

 

[drag]

In my experiance getting the computer to boot into the cdrom by pressing C is very very very difficult when the computer is geeking out.

I don't know what the problem is, but it was always a issue with me. Especially the older beige G3 powermacs.

What I do is turn off the computer completely. Press down the C button and continue to hold it while starting the computer and then hold it the entire time until the stupid thing does what you want. It may reboot again, or sit their for 15 minutes with the stupid watermark image. But it will take it eventually.

then if that didn't work, then I try, try again. different variations.

Stupid macs are sometimes feel like your doing voodoo and you should be dancing around with decapitaded chickens and pressing difficult button presses as a form or religious cleansing for defiling myself with to much wintel hardware. Then after about 3 hours of doing that the special escence that is Steve Jobs that is implanted in every pram will eventually allow you access to the wonderment and joy of being a Mac owner/slave.

Once you get it booted to the install cdrom don't immediately go for a installation. On the cdrom there is a selection you can, er, select that will allow you to run a disk check/repair and a permissions check/repair.

Do a disk repair, and then a permissions repair. May take a couple times to get it to fix everything. Then try to boot up, should work.

also, although I do not know the relevence for todays OS X machines, you can "zap the pram".

To do this you will first have to grow a third limb. After you do that then you have to hold down a special button combo AS your booting up.

Option + that little weird button that is a picture of a square with four loops at each corner (otherwise known as the "command key") + P + R

If you do it properly it will almost imediately reboot, you should here it chime or whatever. Like it cycle 3 or 4 times. This will clean out the non-volitile RAM, which is about the same thing as clearing the cmos in a PC.

Then that should reset the system date back to the 20's or something, so your going to have to remember to set that if you get booted up so that it does cause any more issues. If each time you boot up your system date goes back in time, then you need a new cmos battery, this can cause problems. Especially the unix portion tends to be sensitive to time issues. Fairly common, for powermacs you can pick up the battery from radioshack. I don't know about laptops, though.

If none of that works, then there is more you can do, but unless you have lots of software or stuff you want to keep on the mac it's easier to reinstall.