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flashing question mark

J

jscottl

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 22, 2006
12
0
ok heres my problem I have a Imac 233 rev A with 288 megs of ram. I upgraded the hard drive from the original 4gb to a 25gb. I used a mac os 9.1 disc to boot up the machine and partition the newdrive and format it. I loaded the new hard drive with system 9.1. after the install i restarted the machine, and all i get is the flashing question mark:confused: . I went to the apple troubleshooting site and did every thing it said to do and still the same thing:( . I put the original hard drive back in and loaded it the same way and it worked like a charm. I know the 25gb drive is good, but this really has me confused. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
jscottl said:
ok heres my problem I have a Imac 233 rev A with 288 megs of ram. I upgraded the hard drive from the original 4gb to a 25gb. I used a mac os 9.1 disc to boot up the machine and partition the newdrive and format it. I loaded the new hard drive with system 9.1. after the install i restarted the machine, and all i get is the flashing question mark:confused: . I went to the apple troubleshooting site and did every thing it said to do and still the same thing:( . I put the original hard drive back in and loaded it the same way and it worked like a charm. I know the 25gb drive is good, but this really has me confused. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
It sounds like you haven't yet properly selected the startup disk. You might troubleshoot your problem by reading or rereading this. Good luck.
 
I have tried everything on that list from apple and still nothing. I was told that I could have the jumpers set wrong on my hard drive. What should the settings be. I have set the jumper to master and still nothing. I set the jumper to single and still nothing. I have not tried slave or cable select yet.
 
When I boot with the cd the disk utility finds the hard drive. And when I load the system software it seems to load the hard drive just fine. But when I try to boot from the hard drive after installation I still get the blinking question mark. I tried the startup disk utility on the cd and set it to the hard drive nothing. I tried pushing the x button, nothing. I tried resetting the PRAM nothing.
 
have you tried to go to the startup manager manually? (by pressing option when booting) give that a try then you can select your HD and get it to boot from it. (be sure to select the drive and continue by clicking the arrow on the right)
 
iBlue said:
have you tried to go to the startup manager manually? (by pressing option when booting)
Click to expand...


Don't think that'll work. He has a bondi-blue iMac, which is pre-New World Macs and that option.
 
sorry about that I have tried loading os9 and osx on the hard drive and both of them do the same thing when i try to boot from the hard drive. the funny thing is when i put the 4gb hard drive back in and loaded mac osx on it, it fired right up, and works awesome.
 
You formatted the drive as HFS+, correct?

And you should update all your firmware first from your old hard drive too.
 
i pretty new to the macintosh world. I formatted the drive with the macitosh extended (journal) file system. I also updated all the firmware on the machine. Do I have to update the firmware again if I upgrade the hard drive?
 
Nope.
Since you're new to the Mac world, why are you using OS9/Classic at all?

I would start over.

Drive is jumpered to Master.

Boot from the OS X installer CD and erase the drive, formatting it as HFS+ (journaled is fine), then install OS X again. Since you can't get it to boot, you're not loosing anything.
 
well the os9 is the disk that came with the computer when i bought it so i tried it. Then I bought a copy of osx hoping that it would work. I have erased the drive twice and set the partitions up for osx and formatted with the mac ext (journal) file system everytime. and reloaded it the os twice and still nothing. i think it is probably a lost cause and I just need a different hard drive.
 
<-- stumped.

I can't think of any reason that it won't work.

Personally I think Maxtors are pieces of crap, but for as many folks like me, there's at least as many who like them.

The weirdest part is that it allows you to format the drive and install OS X, but won't see it.

Out of curiosity, which version of OS X are you trying to install?
 
Just checking back in on this. It seems both yellow and iBlue have checked down the list of things I would have done. What kind of install did you try? You might try an archive/install as there may be something goofed in your system files. Another thing, if you have it, you might want to try and run Disk Warrior. That could help if your startup directory is whacked. Do you get "verified" on the new HD in DiskUtility when you check SMART? I successfully ran Panther on our kids' bondi blue G3 for a couple of years, but it was on the smaller HD. I agree, this is weird.
 
I performed a clean install from the cd. I booted from the cd and used the disk utility to partition and format the drive and load the os. Im not sure what you mean by getting verified in the diskutility since i am fairly new to macs, i do know that the disk utility recognizes the drive.
 
Any cure for this yet?

Hi,
Have you found any cure for this yet?
I ask as I seem to have a similar problem.

Trying to install a new 80Gb Hitachi hard drive in an old Bondi Blue revA iMac, I find that the machine will not boot from the cd (or indeed at all) when the new drive is attached. I just get the flashing folder for a period of seconds, and eventually the cd drive spins down (the folder stops flashing and just sits there as a folder). Reinstalling the old 6Gb drive the machine boots fine with hd or cd. The new hard drive has the same effect on a Rev B (333MHz grape) iMac, so I am confident it is the drive at fault and not the cd drive. I assume it is a problem with the jumper settings, but so far as I can tell the drive is already set up as the Master (device 0), as it should be.

Peculiarly, I was able to boot from cd the first time after installing the 80 Gb drive. I partitioned the drive, but the installer refused to install onto the partition I had prepared for OS X. This was under the 8Gb limit (7.4 to be precise), but it was the second partition: I had stuck a small partition (a few megabytes only) in front of it. (If you need to know why, it was because I thought I might put Linux on a separate partition and had got it into my head I would need space for grub or lilo, something which I'm probably wrong about.) Anyway, when it refused to install I repartitioned to make the OS X partition the first one, but it still refused to partition, and when I rebooted I could no longer get the machine to start from cd.

Does anyone have any ideas? Why would the presence of this drive inactivate the cd drive? And why didn't it do so the first time it was installed?

Thanks,
I
 
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