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Cant boot from OSX to install

T

trikenik

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 4, 2003
4
0
Melbourne, Australia
Hi , i'm a pc guy attempting to help my mac cousin with his dual 867
G4.
He recently reformatted and partitioned his hdd and started a fresh
insto, which stalled at 99%. After waiting approx 45-60 mins he
decided to reset the power (at the wall!), and try the install again.
Now he is unable to boot from the sys insto disk!.
List of symptoms and things i've tried.

a.When force booting from CD you can hear it spin up , but it slows
down again and eventually we get a screen that alternates betwen a
folder and a question mark.
b. I tried another cd drive, same thing. I disconnected the data cable
from the hdd and connected it to the cd tried to boot, same thing.
c. Norton Utilies cd wont boot.
d. I've tried my working cd drive on my working data cable on all his
ide controllers, it will not boot.
e. Removed all pci devices except video card.
f. Reseated all ram, then tried booting with each individual module
g. Hdd also seems to spin up but doesent sound like it's being read.
h. Tried zapping pram

I dont know what else to try, any help greatly appreciated :)
 
Re: Cant boot from OSX to install

Originally posted by trikenik

a.When force booting from CD you can hear it spin up , but it slows
down again and eventually we get a screen that alternates betwen a
folder and a question mark.
b. I tried another cd drive, same thing. I disconnected the data cable
from the hdd and connected it to the cd tried to boot, same thing.
c. Norton Utilies cd wont boot.
d. I've tried my working cd drive on my working data cable on all his
ide controllers, it will not boot.
e. Removed all pci devices except video card.
f. Reseated all ram, then tried booting with each individual module
g. Hdd also seems to spin up but doesent sound like it's being read.
h. Tried zapping pram
Click to expand...

Wow, you've gone through the list.

The only additional thing I can think of is "resetting the motherboard" -- which involves pulling out the Moterboard battery (small cylindrical battery) for about 5-10 minutes. Then restarting the computer.

Apple walked me through that once when I was having some troubles.

beyond that, if norton and the system disk don't boot while you are holding the "C" key down, it seems it might be the system.

Like you, my first instincts are RAM. Funny ram can cause weird problems like this.

Another thing to try is to hold the OPTION key down right when you start or restart the computer. This should bring up the boot selector (where you can choose which drive to boot from). Make sure your boot cd is in the CD rom drive when doing so, and click on it and then try to boot like that. [Probably should try this before 'resetting the motherboard']

arn
 
Is that the screen that has what appears to be anti clockwise arrow (refresh?), and an arrow pointing to the right?. If so
I get this occasionally if i dont force the cd boot option, and what happens is I get the timer for a few minutes then no matter which option I click on I get the timer etc etc...ad infinitum...
 
How about resetting the firmware?

Try this.

Hold the 'comman-option-O-F' keys during startup. It should come up with a text console prompt. Once there type the following with a return following each line.

reset-nvram
set-defaults
reset-all

Hopefully that will fix it.
 
Originally posted by trikenik
Is that the screen that has what appears to be anti clockwise arrow (refresh?), and an arrow pointing to the right?. If so
I get this occasionally if i dont force the cd boot option, and what happens is I get the timer for a few minutes then no matter which option I click on I get the timer etc etc...ad infinitum...
Click to expand...

It's doing that because it can't locate a startup disk.
 
Re: Cant boot from OSX to install

Originally posted by trikenik
Hi , i'm a pc guy attempting to help my mac cousin with his dual 867
G4.
He recently reformatted and partitioned his hdd and started a fresh
insto, which stalled at 99%. After waiting approx 45-60 mins he
decided to reset the power (at the wall!), and try the install again.
Now he is unable to boot from the sys insto disk!.
List of symptoms and things i've tried.

a.When force booting from CD you can hear it spin up , but it slows
down again and eventually we get a screen that alternates betwen a
folder and a question mark.
b. I tried another cd drive, same thing. I disconnected the data cable
from the hdd and connected it to the cd tried to boot, same thing.
c. Norton Utilies cd wont boot.
d. I've tried my working cd drive on my working data cable on all his
ide controllers, it will not boot.
e. Removed all pci devices except video card.
f. Reseated all ram, then tried booting with each individual module
g. Hdd also seems to spin up but doesent sound like it's being read.
h. Tried zapping pram

I dont know what else to try, any help greatly appreciated :)
Click to expand...

Booting from a OS XCD is quite similar to booting of a Windows 2000/XP CD-for Macs-'C' and Windows you press any key. You can replace the MB battery, if desired. Also you need Mac OS 9.1 installed prior to installing OS X depending on which OS X version you have .
 
Re: Re: Cant boot from OSX to install

Originally posted by aafuss1
Booting from a OS XCD is quite similar to booting of a Windows 2000/XP CD-for Macs-'C' and Windows you press any key. You can replace the MB battery, if desired. Also you need Mac OS 9.1 installed prior to installing OS X depending on which OS X version you have .
Click to expand...

It's only important to have OS9 pre-installed I believe with 10.1 and only if you want to run classic. With 10.2 it doesn't matter before or after.
 
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