Kudos for Fixing an Old Crash Bug

Question

For a very long time, with Ps CS5 and CS4 whenever I would try to use Photomerge directly with raw files as input I would occasionally see Photoshop just crash out or quit without any message (maybe 1 in 4 times).  So to increase chances of success I just got in the habit of exporting PSD files from Camera Raw, then running Photomerge on those PSD files.  That worked well enough and wasn't much trouble.
But I consciously stopped doing this workaround with Photoshop CS6 during the beta, then with the release, and I'm happy to say that every one - every single one - of my panos made directly from raw files with Camera Raw 7 has been successful.
Whomever fixed it, however you fixed it - you DID fix it.  Thank you!
-Noel

Answer 1

To see if the drive tray will come out, try starting up the iMac with the mouse button held down.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2097
When i turn it on i get the grey screen with the flashing "finder" icon and a question mark. It appears that this confirms the bad hard drive.
Actually, that just means the Mac cannot find a system to boot from; the hard drive may be fine. It just does not have any OS installed on it.
would i then be able to use the reinstall discs from my powerbook to put os x 10.4 on the imac?
If you are getting Leopard for the PowerBook, there is no legal reason you cannot use its Tiger license on the iMac. Actually doing so might be somewhat tricky, since the disc from the PowerBook probably will not boot the iMac.
You should be able to do it using FireWire Target Disk Mode.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
Start up the iMac as described. Using a FireWire cable, connect it to the PowerBook. If the iMac's hard drive is working, it should appear on the PowerBook's Desktop as an external FireWire drive. If it does not appear, run Disk Utility and see if it needs to be mounted or formatted.
Note: For the rest of this to work, the PowerBook must be PowerPC. All "PowerBooks" are PowerPC, but if you were calling an Intel MacBook a "PowerBook," this will not work.
If the iMac's hard drive does appear, it is probably OK. You should run Disk Utility and do a +Repair Disk+ on the iMac's hard drive. Or you may just want to use the Erase tab to reformat the hard drive.
At this point, you can just restart your PowerBook from its Tiger installation disc. Use the PowerBook to run Installer. Be sure to Target the iMac's hard drive (not the PowerBook's internal drive) for the installation. Once installation is complete, let the PowerBook restart from the installation it just performed. Go through the setup screens, then shut down. Disconnect the two Macs and restart the iMac normally. It should start up using the Tiger installation performed by the PowerBook.