Mac wont boot?

[StraightPipe]

Ok, i'm not a mac user, but my art major roomate is. (OS9.1)

she recently was installing a printer (HP deskjet 882) with frsh install files from the HP website. installation when fine, she saved her work and rebooted as requested by the installer. apon reboot the screen was grey, then a disck icon apeared with a flashing question mark on it. frightening. so we reboot again, and this time it's a folder with a flashing "?" and "finder" logo alternating... after several reboots same thing. we disconnected the new printer, booted, reconnected the old printer, boted, and still nothing.

is her mac burnt? what does this mean?

I'm very comfortable working in windows or cmos, but this whole imac things is very strange, so i need help.

to make the situaion worse she's PMS'ing, and has her senior show this week (where she presents her portfolio to the art world (major stress for her)

she works mainly in photoshop, but has recently written some stuff in flash. (both are needed for her show this week)

Please help a PC user figure this out : )

 

[n0cmonkey]

Stick the Mac OS disk in the drive, boot off of it (command +c, IIRC), and look for some repair programs. There are programs there, but I can't remember names at the moment. Good luck.

 

[Vadatajs]

just hold c when booting from the cd, then change the startup disk (control panel I think). That quetion mark means it can't find the system folder. If this doesn't work, you may need to re install. Hopefully, you won't have to initialize the disk first (initialize = reformat in mac terms).

 

[InlineFive]

I can't help with Macs but I think it's funny that Steve Jobs totes that Macs are uncrashable. Not even Panther is perfect even though it's much better about stability.

-Por

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
I can't help with Macs but I think it's funny that Steve Jobs totes that Macs are uncrashable. Not even Panther is perfect even though it's much better about stability.

-Por

No computer or OS is fail safe, but Mac does a much better job as far as stability then Windows/PC in almost all cases. As mentioned before the ? means the machine is not reading or seeing the disk. Hitting C will load from the CD. You may have a failing hard drive on your hands, how old is that Imac?

 

[Nothinman]

No computer or OS is fail safe, but Mac does a much better job as far as stability then Windows/PC in almost all cases

Not really, and not especially when talking about OS 9. OS 9 doesn't even have real protected memory support.

 

[KF]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
I can't help with Macs but I think it's funny that Steve Jobs totes that Macs are uncrashable. Not even Panther is perfect even though it's much better about stability.

-Por

This is the first Mac that ever crashed. And since the person that reported it admits he is a PC user, he might be lying.

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

No computer or OS is fail safe, but Mac does a much better job as far as stability then Windows/PC in almost all cases

Not really, and not especially when talking about OS 9. OS 9 doesn't even have real protected memory support.

I was refering to OS 10.2 and 10.3. Sorry, did not clarify that.

 

[Nothinman]

I was refering to OS 10.2 and 10.3. Sorry, did not clarify that.

Yes, but the thread is referring to OS 9.1. And even so I managed to break OS X.2 real nice on an iBook trying to get the AirPort card drivers working because there's no way to remove them once they're installed.

 

[dnuggett]

Yes, but the thread is referring to OS 9.1.

I know what the thread was referring to, but read the post I replied to and quoted. What OS was mentioned?

 

[Nothinman]

I still believe that NT is more stable than OS X on known good hardware, I know it didn't take me long to break X.2 with the AirPort drivers I mentioned.

 

[drag]

Ya OS 9 is a turd of a operating system. The only reason people liked it was due to it being the last traditional-looking Mac OS.

I personally find OS 9 a particularly frustrating experiance. 9 times out of 10 you can fix any of it's issues when something breaks, but do to the GUI-interface and the supossed userfriendly-ness of it the solutions are counter-intuitive and unless you have extensive experiance using it.

For instance a bad cmos battery can wreak havok with it. Programs stop opening, fonts don't show up. All sorts of weird crap. The only way you'd notice something was wrong, you look at the clock and notice that it defaults back to a certian date back in the 1970's or 30's or something, depending on the generation. Most g3's and earlier g4's will probably have, had, or will soon have a bad battery. No errors, no cmos-has-been-reset or anything. A quick trip to radio-shack is the only fix.

Another one is a corrupted Pram. This is were the some of the settings for the OS are located. Suppose to be OS-ONLY stuff, but lots of programs like to put hooks into it, like printer drivers or a good example was Quark Express. THis was a big Apple-no-no, but they even broke their own rules on a couple programs. AFter a while this crap would build up and stop your computer from working.

The fix is lovingly called "zap your pram". You can reset the pram and lose a bunch of settings by holding Command, Option, P, and R keys at startup. If done correctly it will beep and then reboot. Then you keep holding it and let it reboot/beep 3-4 more times to make sure that it gets cleared. The hard part is that you have to hold all the buttons AND hit the reset button. With a little practice and my big hands I can do it all once, but for most people you end up with both hands on the keyboard and kicking at the reset button with your shoe tip, because unless you hold the keys AT STARTUP, it just doesn't work.

I always did this before installing a new OS, or doing a upgrade.

There were dozens of thing like this.

It made me (a linux user) almost go crazy. "What does it do? Why does it do this? Can't we fix this?" answer: "Who cares? It works now doesn't it? It's a Apple, get used to it." ARgh.

This tradition has unfortunatly spread into OS X. Most of it crops up innocently as inconsitant user-interfaces, like using brushed steel stuff on the wrong type of app, or something like that. A more serious one is that once you install some programs the installer changes your permissions around, breaking stuff, causing security problems. It was recently one of 4 "serious" security vunerabilities in OS X, but I've know about it ever since I used OS X. THis is a big Apple-no-no, but apple does break it's own rules with some programs. The good thing is that it seems so random that it would be impossible to exploit it. (The fix is to run a permission repair in the disk utility in your application stuff, or from the installation disk. This and running disk repair from the disk utility in the installatioin disk, will fix 70-80% all queerness in OS X)

Other then that OS X is a billion times better then OS 9.

 

[StraightPipe]

Originally posted by: drag
Ya OS 9 is a turd of a operating system. The only reason people liked it was due to it being the last traditional-looking Mac OS.

I personally find OS 9 a particularly frustrating experiance. Other then that OS X is a billion times better then OS 9.

Thats just like 98 -> XP. XP is really stable.

anywho enough of the mac vs. pc flaming.

She dsnt have any system disks (ehhh, this is frustrating) is there anything i can do to help her?

 

[dnuggett]

You never did answer my ? about how old the Imac was.. you may try calling Apple if she has any support left. You may also want to "find" a system disk from somewhere or someone.. I don't think there is much hope left.

 

[BigBadBiologist]

Yeah, you really need a system disk here. If you boot off of the system CD, you can at least grab all her stuff off of the harddrive. (I've got an OS8 CD that I can send to you if you can't find anything else)

But, try zapping the PRAM and see where that gets you.

 

[mosco]

Does your college or university have a mac store or anything like that where you might be able to atleast borrow some 9.1 disks?