I can't boot from the Install/restore CDs & won't recognize an external HD

I purchased a used Powerbook G4 with tiger 10.4.11 installed. I have two problems Which I think may be software based.
First I want to Install OS 9.2 to use some programs I had on my old Mac. However when holding down the C key the computer still boots off the HD. The disk I am using is marked Power Mac G4 Mac OS version 10.2, however the read me file said it should work for the powerbook.
Second I purchased a USB external HD for use as a back up and to store graphic and music files. The computer will not recognize it. every other USB device I have used has worked (printer, mouse, keyboards and flash drives).
Is this some sort of security feature? If so how do I reset it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Donis, and a warm welcome to the forums!
However when holding down the C key the computer still boots off the HD.
Is Firmware password protection in Mac OS X setup...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1352
It would block usage of all the startup keys, like C, N, T, D, CMD+s, CMDOption+pr, CMD +v, Option, and Shift, as well as booting from anything but the Hard Drive.
The disk I am using is marked Power Mac G4 Mac OS version 10.2, however the read me file said it should work for the powerbook.
Some PBs, which exact one do you have?
At the Apple Icon at top left>About this Mac.
Then click on More Info>Hardware and report this upto *but not including the Serial#*...
Hardware Overview:
Machine Name: Power Mac G5 Quad
Machine Model: PowerMac11,2
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (1.1)
Number Of CPUs: 4
CPU Speed: 2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 10 GB
Bus Speed: 1.25 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.7f1
Second I purchased a USB external HD for use as a back up and to store graphic and music files.
Is it Bus Powered or does it have an A/C power brick?
Did you open Disk Utility & see if it shows up there & Format it Mac OS Extended?

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Hard disk errors, but can't boot from the install DVD

My mini reports disk errors when I run the Disk Utility Verify on the main boot hard drive. However, I have not been able to boot the computer from the install DVD. I try restarting while holding down the C key, and still it boots from the internal drive. I've tried option-restart, and do not get the opportunity to select a boot disk. An external USB drive, on which I periodically clone the main disk, now does not mount. Disk Utility says it too has errors, and it is unable to repair them. A third external USB drive appears to be OK.
The computer is still operating, apparently normally, otherwise. This computer should still be under warranty. I bought it in April, as I recall.
Any help will be much appreciated.

<sigh>
I've attempted most of these things.
The drive on which I had the system clone died at essentially the same time as the problem came up with the errors on the main drive. I suspect this was due to the same root cause, or a related problem, just because of the timing. I'd cloned the main drive approximately a week previously with apparently no problem.
I also have been unable to boot from the install DVD.
The other external drive, the one that still works, is one I use mostly for rolling backups of my documents, photo and music folders. It is not big enough to hold a clone of the main drive. In any case, I'm assuming that if I attempted to clone it now, it would either not work, or I'd simply copy the errors to the clone.
I haven't used the Time Machine, since I didn't feel I had an external drive large enough to make it useful.
What 3rd party software do you recommend? Keep in mind, as I also mentioned earlier, that the computer is still under warranty, and I'm loath to do anything that could be construed as voiding the warranty.
I'm also on a pretty restricted budget, due to recent car repairs.

Trying to install SL on a new hard-drive for my iMac, when asked which disk to install on it gave me no options, i followed advice from another forum and created a partition, now can't boot from the new drive at all. Help?

I've had **** with my iMac, the hard-drive failed so i replaced it with a new 1TB Samsung drive. Then when i tried to install SL from the install disk, all went to plan until it asked me which drive i wanted to install it on, where it came up with a box where my options should have been, but instead it didn't give me any options to install it on any drive i.e. it asked which drive i wanted to install it on but no drives came up to select.
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Hi db2
That off the shelf MS-DOS / FAT-32 drive needs to re-partitioned GUID Partition Table / Mac OS Extended (Journaled) before you can install OS X and Startup your Intel iMac from it.
1. Boot from your original install or retail SL DVD and open Disk Utility.
2. Highlight the new HD in the list of drives and select the Partition tab.
3. Under Volume Scheme select 1 Partition and click on the Options... button.
4. Select GUID Partition Table in the drop down window and click OK.
5. Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and click the Apply button.
6. Once thats done, then you can do a clean SL Install, Restore from TM , your old HD or Bootable Clone.
Dennis

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My IMAC will not boot from the install disk.

Hello, your installation disk is running under OSX??? If no the media has a problem!!!
1. Restart your mac and hold the alt (option key) to select media to install.
2. Restart you mac and hold the "c" key to boot.
an other solution is to make a partition on the hard drive and put a restore image of the Mac os X Installation dvd inside it then Restart your mac nad hold the "option" key and you will see the partition with mac os x installation and you can make a new installation from there.

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Thank you Eustace Mendis for your answer.
I rebooted the Mac Mini holding the Option key down but it doesn't work. I used an USB drive with O.s 10.7 from Apple that I have used previuosly with other computers and I also tried with a CD install O.S 10.6
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Can't boot from OSX Install disc.

Hello,
I am trying to restore my iMac from a Time MAchine backup and to do that I remembered that I had to boot off of the OSX install disk and choose Disk Utility. I thought that restoring from timeMAchine would be the hard and long part, but I am having trouble booting off of the OSX disc.
1.) I popped it into my iMac and it mounts and loads. Its runs fine so I know there is nothing wrong with the disc.
2.) I restarted my iMac and held C.
3.) The grey screen appeard and then the Apple logo and then the spinning icon underneath it. But it gets stuck there and doesn't boot off of the disk.
4.) I shutdown the machine by holding the power-button and when it restarted I held D. It ran the hardware test fine and I passed the hardware test.
5.) I shut it down again, same way in four, and held option. This time I chose to boot form the Mac OS X Install DVD. It again got stuck at the Grey screen with the Apple logo and the spinning icon.
Does anyone know how to or can help me get my iMac to boot from the OSX install disc or how I can use Disc Utility to restore my iMac from TimeMachine?
Thanks in Advance & Best Regards,
theirf.

Sorry, OE = Original Equipment - the grey discs that came with your Mac.
SL = Snow Leopard - Mac OS X 10.6.x.
theirf wrote:
What do OE and SL mean?
I think i understand though. You mean that any disc with a higher version of something will still work on a machine with a lower version of that thing right?
Not any disc. The only grey ones that will work are those that came with that Mac.
Any retail disc of a later OS version will work, and in most cases it would boot from an external HD with a later OS installed.
However, as Snow Leopard only came on two retail versions, 10.6.0 and 10.6.3, the choice is a bit limited.
The current retail version is available here.

I can't boot from the windows cd with boot camp

I got Vista up and running via boot camp but now I have a problem that could cause some issues. How the **** do you boot from a windows cd with boot camp!?!? When I stick in the windows based CD (could be the vista install CD -after vista's been installed of course- or a Windows home server restore cd) and hold down the option key I chose to boot from the CD in the menu then the screen goes black as it should and then it says press any key to boot from cd or dvd..... It gives me 5 seconds to press a key and then it conintues to boot into Vista. The thing is when it asks me to press any key I press any and all keys on the keyboard and I get no response and it just boots into vista. This can be quite a problem, what if I need to restore vista via the install CD? I can't chose to boot from it cause everytime it asks me to none of my key presses register. So everytime I have a problem I won't be able to restore or even diagnose it, I'll just have to reinstall vista? I don't think I can even bring up the safe mode or anything like this. The keyboard won't work until I reach the password screen of Vista. I've also tried plugging in a USB keyboard to it and it still doesn't work. So basically I need to know how to make the keyboard work before Vista loads.

Ok, well I just tried booting from the windows cd and it seems that I lied to ya It seems that you can boot from it. Although I only took it to the point I was comfortable with. The boot resulted in it asking me to install windows and I didn't see any partitions listed or anything, so I chickened out (so to speak) not wanting to take the chance of my Leopard installation getting screwed up.
It's been a quite some time since I used the Vista boot disc and can't really remember how it went when I used it in conjunction with boot camp beta. Sorry can't give you anymore information.

Not booting from the install CD

I have put in a new HD, and the computer will not read the CD when holding the C key. I have tried option C, and just option but the CD dose not show up. I have tried my G5 desktop install CD. In the case of the MacBook CD it tries to read but then ejects the disk. The desktop CD spins up, but never loads.
I have formatted the disk with no change.
I have removed the HD, and it dose not boot from the CD.

This sounds like a hardware issue and needs to be looked at. It should have booted to the optical drive by holding down the C key with the correct DVD inserted. The correct DVD meaning a system disc that came with that MacBook or a newer OS disk. I'm also thinking that since the machine has nothing to boot to on the HD, it will automatically try the optical drive for an OS.
Have you tried booting to your old/previous HD? -GDF

I can't boot from the DiskWarrior CD!

Something went wrong with the OS X filesystem on my PowerBook, and whenever it boots from disk, Mac OS X fails and falls into Single-User Mode. From here, I can run fsck, but it can't repair the drive.
I was told that DiskWarrior could probably fix my problem, so I decided to give it a try.
The problem is that it won't boot on my PowerBook! This is despite the fact that the PowerBook will boot just fine from a Mac OS 9.2.1 CD and that the DiskWarrior CD will boot fine on my iBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.4.3.
I've been trying for hours, and I've done the following steps:
Holding down "c" at boot. - Results with Floppy and Flashing Question mark.
Holding down Command-Option-Shift-Delete at boot. - Results in the same.
Resetting PRAM and doing above actions.
Booted into Open Firmware and typed "boot cdrom"- this gave me a grey OS X boot screen with an action not permitted sign.
Any ideas? I can get my data off of the disk by using "scp" via the single-user mode, but it doesn't do me any good because I can't cleanly reinstall OS X Jaguar because I've misplaced the first install disc!!
What can I do here? What are my options? By the way, the DiskWarrior version is 3.0.3.
Thanks for your help!
Brian

I must plead ignorance since I always use Toast, but
does Disk Utility burn bootable OSX CDs? I am sure
you have the answer but I just don't have the time
right now to check.
It sure does. I've used it multiple times in the past to burn bootable CDs.
One option is to use the freeware 'BootCD' to create
a bootable CD and then you can add whatever utilities
you wish before it is burned. This will have to be
done on a Mac that has Jaguar since the Wallstreet
does not natively support 10.3 or 10.4 and the
BootCD uses the OS on the "host" computer to
construct its boot OS.
ttp://lowendmac.com/misc/05/0126.html
I will check this option out. You're just full of work-arounds aren't you?
I put my own DW CD 3.0.3 in my Wallstreet, made on my
iBook burner since the 3.0.3 Update I downloaded
requires using the original CD (I had either 3.0.1 or
3.0.2) and burning a new one with the 3.0.3 Update.
It will not boot my Wallstreet. So I started up in
9.x, launched my XPostFacto (I am running 10.3.8 on
my Wallstreet) and XPostFacto identified the DW CD as
a "MacOS X 10.3.2 Install CD". I believe this was the
version I was running on the iBook when I burned the
new DW 3.0.3 CD -or- this was the version OSX Alsoft
used on my original 3.0.1 or 3.0.2 CD...I can't
recall. So it makes sense my DW 3.0.3 won't boot my
Wallstreet. I am wondering if the real cause of a
no-boot for you is a too modern OSX on the CD. Before
spending a lot of time on CD-Rs, I would contact
Alsoft and see if the Wallstreet will boot the 3.0.3
CD.
I was worried about this originally. I will certainly contact Alsoft about this and post back.
If you are unsuccessful booting the DW CD and have a
set of Jag CDs, you can either erase the HD and start
fresh or perform an Archive & Install...this
preserves your Home folder but you do need sufficient
HD space for the A&I.
I ordered new Jag CDs today. I might just do this. However, I'd still like to get this DiskWarrior issue straightened out for future use and for fellow users of these discussions.
You can also install 10.3.x or 10.4.x (you need CDs)
using XPostFacto. If curious, read all about it:
http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/
I was thinking about this at one point in time. How well does Mac OS X 10.3 run on the Wallstreet? I saw something in the release notes about a video problem. Can you confirm anything?
Thanks for your Wallstreet expertise!
Brian

Can I boot from tiger install disk without wiping my hard drive?

I have an old mac install disk with tiger on it and I want to be able to boot from it. Can I do that without damaging my hard drive?

You can boot from it, but if you continue through without stopping eventually it will try to install Tiger. However, if you want to install Tiger on a USB flash drive or HDD, then when you arrive at the screen for selecting a Target device, be sure to select the USB device before clicking on the Install button.
If the USB device has not been properly partitioned and formatted already, then be sure you do this:
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Can't boot off the Install Disk, loud fan noises, "No" symbol

I recently attempted to verify my internal hard drive status with Disk Utility, and got the following response back:
"Disk Utility stopped verifying “Macintosh HD” because the following error was encountered:
The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair"
I tried to boot off the Tiger Install Disk in the hopes of repairing my internal hard drive, but after a minute of the Apple logo and spinny icon at startup, the logo is replaced with a gray "no" symbol. I then had to turn off and on the iMac while holding down Option to reselect my internal hard drive as the startup disk. While this is happening, my iMac's fan is going crazy. It calms down once I get the original startup disk selected.
I have already tried resetting the SMU and PRAM, with no luck. I am also booting off of my roommate's Tiger OS X Install Disk, not my own (I am a college student, and I believe I left my copy of Tiger at home). So far, I am having no trouble using my iMac, as long as it is running off the internal hard drive, but I don't like the ominous "Volume needs repair" message Disk Utility gave me. Any suggestions?
Here's the complete log from Disk Utility the last time I tried to verify my startup disk:
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Illegal name
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Disk Utility stopped verifying “Macintosh HD” because the following error was encountered:
The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair
1.9 GHz PowerPC G5 (iSight) Mac OS X (10.4.8)

If you can boot from an external drive, use Disk Utility from the external disk to repair your computer, you can't do it from the same drive you have booted from. Perhaps the friend who lent you the Tiger disk will let you use his computer and connect to yours in Target Disk Mode.
Let me know how you make out,
Miriam

Can't Boot from OSX Install DVD

my problem is identical to this one and i can't find solution. so i don't unerstand what's wrong. i try Tiger and Leopard dist on CD and DVD media without success. if i restore distributive disk on partition on hard disk my mini is boot ok from it. DVD-drive seems to be ok coz i'm boot from that drive on Ubuntu or MorphOS without any trouble.
Message was edited by: hooddy
Message was edited by: hooddy

no it doesn't. and now i know that i need disk which complected my mini or retail box. thanx.

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