PC Tech needs help with G4

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PC Tech

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Got it back to 9.2.2 for now...THANKS

Hello,
I am a very capable pc person who married an Art Director.
Being the nice guy I am I bought her a dual 1.25 G4 (two years ago)
it came dual boot with 9.2.2 and X (not sure of the level)
she has been using the 9.2.2 because she is resistant to change.
..Well her new software programs require 10 so last night she changed her boot to boot to the OS10....it errored on startup and dropped her into a command prompt. so now she can't use it at all.
After trying everything I could google on keyboard commands to get it to choose the 9.2.2 os for boot.. I am here..
is there a file that I can edit from the command prompt to get it to boot back to the 9.2.2 so she can get her files off or is there a way to fix the
/etc/??? some type of security file looking for a password error?

any help would be greatly appreciated and would get me points with my wife.

Thanks

Brad
 
Try holding the Option key down at startup to get the screen to choose the startup system.

If you'll be running OS X on it, you should get the newest system (Tiger 10.4) and install.
 
PC Tech said:
Hello,
I am a very capable pc person who married an Art Director.
Being the nice guy I am I bought her a dual 1.25 G4 (two years ago)
it came dual boot with 9.2.2 and X (not sure of the level)
she has been using the 9.2.2 because she is resistant to change.
..Well her new software programs require 10 so last night she changed her boot to boot to the OS10....it errored on startup and dropped her into a command prompt. so now she can't use it at all.
After trying everything I could google on keyboard commands to get it to choose the 9.2.2 os for boot.. I am here..
is there a file that I can edit from the command prompt to get it to boot back to the 9.2.2 so she can get her files off or is there a way to fix the
/etc/??? some type of security file looking for a password error?

any help would be greatly appreciated and would get me points with my wife.

Thanks

Brad
Click to expand...

If it's booting to a command prompt, you should be able to bless the mos9 system folder.

I think the command is something like:

bless -folder9 "/path/to/mos9/System Folder/"

You might need to use the -folder and -use9 flags as well. It's been a while since I've used it. You could try looking at the man for it at http://www.hmug.org/man/1/bless.php
 
Also-

If you plan on keeping the machine dual boot, I suggest setting up separate partitions for MOS9 and MOSX simply because you can option-boot your rig and quickly choose between them.

Another thing I just thought of... (sorry lacking coffee this morning)

If you have the install CD, boot off of it and then you can use the start-up disk preference panel to choose which OS to boot off of. While your at it, you may want to check your disk permissions, etc.
 
I didn't have the MOS boot cd last night just the application restore cd's
She is going to bring them home from work tonight and I will try that first.
I tried to boot to Norton utilities but it wouldn't boot to that cd.
it did however boot to the hardware troubleshooting cd, which was no help except to let me know that I can still boot to a bootable CD.

Thanks.
 
If you got dropped to the command line, then chances are you're in single-user mode, and have root permissions.

(Sorry if I sound condescending; not sure of your Unix familiarity. You say you're a PC tech person, so you may know all this already.)

The first thing to try is to run the basic fsck (pron. "fisk") procedure for diagnosing file system errors. "fsck -q" runs a quick check and will return a report on whether the system was unmounted cleanly. "fsck -y" is the default command for most people; it means "Run the FS check, and answer 'yes' to any question you might otherwise ask." It overrides interactive prompting for approval.

There's plenty of literature on this, including OS X-specific documentation:

http://www.westwind.com/reference/OS-X/commandline/single-user.html

NOTE: If you see the message FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED during the course of fsck execution, run it again until you no longer see that message.

If that doesn't seem to be helping, you should try booting from the OS X disks that came with your wife's machine. Disk utilities are included.

If all else fails and you just want to retrieve the data, you can boot up the machine in "Target disk mode" by holding down the T button after you hear the startup chime. You'll see a firewire logo appear on the screen. At this point, the computer is just a firewire drive; you can hook it up to another machine and run diagnostics, move data off, etc.

There is lots of information around on these processes; here's an example.

http://www.osxfaq.com/DailyTips/04-2005/04-06.ws

Let us know how it goes.
 
Thanks for all the info I will post tomorrow to tell you how I got it fixed.

I AM GOING TO FIX IT!! one way or another... thanks for the firewire tip that may com in handy if all the other options fail.

thanks
Brad
 
More specifically .. boot to the OS 9 install disk.. click on the Apple menu then on Control Panels then Start Up Disk..click the disclosure triangle next to the Mac HD and you will see two folders one named System Folder and the other just named System. Choose the System Folder and reboot. The computer should boot to OS 9
 
If your wife is going to use OS X, I would _highly_ recommend buying 10.3 (called "Panther") or 10.4 ("Tiger"). 10.1 is very rough and lots of software requires at least 10.2. From what I've seen, 10.3 is the fastest. 10.4 is good too, with more features. I'm using 10.4. It may be hard to believe with your Windows experience, but newer versions of OS X are actually _more_ efficient and responsive. That's not a slam of Windows, it just that . . . Oh, wait. That is a slam! ;)

You can probably get 10.3 for _well_ under $100, if cost is an issue.

Doug
 
Thanks everyone for all the help.

I tried everything to no avail.. then Bonnie brought home her 10.4 disk from her G5 at work.. it finally booted to it but gave an error "you cannot install this version on this computer" then gave us all the boot options available.
she has it back up and working on 9.2.2 and we are going to burn all of her files to dvd so we can wipe it clean and start fresh. AFTER my Amazon.com order of MAC for Dummies arrives::ha::

Thanks so much for your help "I will be back!"
 
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