> Explorer froze him out and so he started pushing various > F Keys along with Command, Option and Control in various meaningless combinations as though he was still on his old PC, and now he can't get past the flashing > Question mark. > > I think his random F-Key attempts at hard restart are the root cause > of the computer not being to locate its operating system. > You think?
Not really. Originally, F1 was undo, F2 through F3 were cut, copy and paste, but whether anything else uses tnow I have no idea. QuarkXpress had its own use for them all, and the Horizon BBC emulator also uses them for BBC Micro function keys I think. In recent versions of Mac OS < X you can use the function keys to launch programs and, presumably, files too. I can't imagine those keys did anything to your machine at all. > I got him to boot from a TechTool Pro 3 CD, over the phone, > but even TechTool after scanning for missing volumes, and selecting > his hard Drive. . . won't rebuild either the Desktop or the Directory > or defrag. I concur with s cheiner, get Disk Warrior. > Zapped the Pram, tried starting with extensions off. . . no go. > > I suspect a corrupt Finder and prefs . Nah, this is either the file system that's gone, or one of the kernel files. When my Mac came back on once after a power cut, ICQ produced an error message that froze the machine for a few hours until I returned to it and clicked OK. I force quitted a few programs that had got screwed up from that, and rebooted. And the Mac crashed during reboot. I've also found that the Mac is quite likely to crash again within a few hours of a major crash. So I wonder if Explorer disturbed something when it crashed. You will certainly find that crashes damage the file system, perhaps from half-completed disc operations that were in progress at the time of the crash. For all I know your drive was full of errors already and this was the last straw - errors "breed" errors over time as the Mac performs operations based on wrong data read from the disc. You should run a disc repair tool every so often to repair all these, but DO NOT run Norton!! Norton is the program that trashed three quarters of my own drive just recently in the guise of trying to repair it - definitely go with Disk Warrior. Norton is usually fine but it can go badly wrong. And with Disk Warrior, it has an amazing preview mode that lets you play with a read-only copy of the repaired disc to check that it's OK, without writing any changes, if you wish to check that it's not made anything worse. > I still use the old non-F-Key keyboard and know the three-finger salute > (hard restart) on this board (Command-Ctrl-power) > but what is it on the Extended board > with the F keys, which he is using? The function keys have nothing to do with it as far as I know, I don't recall a single system shortcut that ever used them. It's still ctrl-cmd-power on my Apple Design Keyboard just as with my original StarMax keyboard. -- StarMax is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... / Buy books, CDs, videos, and more from Amazon.com \ / <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/lowendmac> \ Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> StarMax list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/starmax.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/starmax%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
