OS 9 Classic stalls on start up

Question

     I have an iBook, running 10.4.11. I can afford to upgrade to a Pentium processor MacBook, but choose not to do so because of thousands of dollars worth of software I have that works only on OS 9, so I need to keep 10.4, which, on the old Motorola processor, will run both X and 9-Classic.
     The problem is that I had a previous iBook and woke up one night to the sound of the hard drive making a grinding sound. Of course I immediately shut it off. I then shipped it to my son, who is also a Mac devotee. He not only picked me up another iBook at a reasonable price, but took the HD out of my old iBook, put it in an external USB hard drive case, and it worked fine, so he sent me both. The iBook worked great, both in X and 9-Classic, so I began transferring (drag & drop) everything over from my old hard drive to the new iBook.
     After I finished, I tried to start 9 Classic - the Classic screen would pull up and the progress bar would begin to move, but stall after it had filled in roughly 1/16 of an inch. I could leave it on all night, but it still wouldn't load any further. I noticed I had SoftWare Restore in the Application Support folder of my OS 9 System Folder, and thought restoring my 9 software might make a difference, but discovered 9 has to start up before the restoration app can be used, so I'm back at square one.
     I'm usually very knowledgeable with Macs (still have an old LC, as well as 2 Bondi iMacs), but this has me stumped. I'm betting I pulled something over from my old hard drive that I shouldn't have and it's creating a conflict, but I can't imagine what it could have been. I've tried starting up with extensions off, but that doesn't work either. I can't use any of my OS 9 software, and could sure use some recommendations.

Answer 1

Hi BD, good to hear from you again. You might remember I posted this just before T-giving, and was advised to try again after the holiday, as likely many were away celebrating.
As I mentioned above, "I've tried starting up with extensions off, but that doesn't work either." So, nope.
I once did call-in Mac Tech Support, and after "Have you checked to see if it's plugged in?" the second most frequent question I asked was, "Have you tried starting with extensions off?"
Note particularly, in the screen shot below, the tiny area on the left of the progress bar, indicating that it started to load, then stopped.