I am trying to boot from my external hard drive and I cannot get the option to show what disk to boot from when starting up. I am using a standard windows keyboard on my iMac G4 right now because I don't have an apple keyboard. Any ideas? I have tried alt, ctrl, alt+windows+shift+delete.
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Boot from external
- Thread starter phifer8390
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Are you still able to boot from the internal drive?
If so, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk and choose your drive to boot from. If it doesn't show up, the it isn't bootable on your machine.
The following is from TUAW:
X during startup - Force Mac OS X startup
option - (eventually) brings up a screen with startup volume choices
Option-Command-Shift-Delete - Bypass primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume (such as a CD or external disk)
C - Start up from a CD that has a system folder
N - Attempt to start up from a compatible network server (NetBoot)
T - Start up in FireWire Target Disk mode (very handy for plugging your Mac into another as an external hard drive)
Shift - start up in Safe Boot mode and temporarily disable login items and non-essential kernel extension files (Mac OS X 10.2 and later)
Command-V - Start up in Verbose mode.
Command-S - Start up in Single-User mode
cmd-opt-p-r - Zap PRAM. Hold down until second chime.
cmd-opt-n-v - Clear NV RAM. Similar to reset-all in Open Firmware.
cmd-opt-o-f - Boot into open firmware
hold mouse click - force eject a CD/DVD
The Alt key should be the Option key, which is generally used to bring up the OS Selection Menu - even when there is only one system to boot from.
If so, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk and choose your drive to boot from. If it doesn't show up, the it isn't bootable on your machine.
The following is from TUAW:
X during startup - Force Mac OS X startup
option - (eventually) brings up a screen with startup volume choices
Option-Command-Shift-Delete - Bypass primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume (such as a CD or external disk)
C - Start up from a CD that has a system folder
N - Attempt to start up from a compatible network server (NetBoot)
T - Start up in FireWire Target Disk mode (very handy for plugging your Mac into another as an external hard drive)
Shift - start up in Safe Boot mode and temporarily disable login items and non-essential kernel extension files (Mac OS X 10.2 and later)
Command-V - Start up in Verbose mode.
Command-S - Start up in Single-User mode
cmd-opt-p-r - Zap PRAM. Hold down until second chime.
cmd-opt-n-v - Clear NV RAM. Similar to reset-all in Open Firmware.
cmd-opt-o-f - Boot into open firmware
hold mouse click - force eject a CD/DVD
The Alt key should be the Option key, which is generally used to bring up the OS Selection Menu - even when there is only one system to boot from.
Thanks for that. Soon after I realized that my iMac G4 will not boot from an external USB drive only firewire. I finally got the drive menu when I plugged the keyboard straight into the computer instead of into my USB hub.