Re: Installed the OS, but the system refuses to boot

Talking Hand Mon, 02 Aug 2004 01:16:13 -0700

The flashing question mark means "can't find System Folder" -- to fix it is simple -- just go to the Apple Menu (top left of screen), go to the Control Panels on the drop-down menu and set Startup Disk to your hard disk with OS 8.5 installed. I think you can do this after booting off the CD, but my iMac has always started up every time, even with the flashing question mark.

Should work like a charm!

I would seek out and find the upgrade to OS 9.1 -- I think that's the best "Classic" OS, if you're not going to add OS X. I still use it because our Iomega CD-burner doesn't work with 9.2 or X. 9.2 is primarily useful when going back and forth to X -- but I haven't had any problems with 9.1 in that regard. Of course, when I need to use an "old" app, I merely reboot to 9.1 rather than use the "Classic" environment within OS X.

Only OS X needs to be partitioned in the first 8 gigs.

Eddie

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Jay Salzman)
Reply-To: "iMac List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "iMac List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Installed the OS, but the system refuses to boot
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 16:43:51 -0700

Hi all,

I don't use imacs, so I'm a bare bones newbie...

My mom's hard drive died.  I recovered her data by mounting her drive on
my Linux box (after discovering they use IDE; I thought they used SCSI).

Next I bought a 7200rpm 80GB IDE drive and installed it.  It appears to
have gone in correctly; I ended up with no orphan screws.  ;-)

The next step was to install the OS.

She has an orange CD labelled "imac Software install" which booted.  At
first, I couldn't install the OS but then found a program to "initialize
a hard drive", which I assume is essentially making an HFS file system.

After initializing the drive, I was able to install the OS.  The
installation was impressively simple:

   * select destination
   * agree to license (this is MacOS 8.5)
   * "install data"

After awhile, the system read:

   The installation process has finished.  Click quit to leave this
   program.  Click continue to install other software.

Looking around the hard drive, I found an installation log.  Everything
looked good -- no errors.  I wrote a test file to the hard drive.  So
then I took the CD out of the drive and rebooted.

The screen, upon reboot, displayed an icon of a folder with a blinking
icon that alternated between a "?" and a graphic that looked like a face
(a square, two eyes and a "lightning bolt" that looked like a nose").

I'm assuming that this is MacOS's way of saying:

   I can't find a boot device.

I put the OS installation disk back into the computer.  My little test
file was still on the drive, so I know the drive is working.  I
reinstalled the OS for the heck of it and rebooted.

Nothing.  I still got the flashing "?" with the imac "face".


I'm at a complete loss here.  If this were one of my Linux boxes, I
would say that the master boot record isn't pointing to a bootable
partition.

I refuse to believe that MacOS is very much different than x86/Linux
under the hood, so I'm assuming that MBR isn't pointing to a boot
partition.  Maybe there's nothing written to the MBR.  Maybe there was
something I should've done to mark the partition as "bootable".

I'm completely stumped.  Can someone please give me some help on how to
resolve this problem?

Thanks!
Pete


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Re: Installed the OS, but the system refuses to boot

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