OS9.2 freezes as soon as desktop loads on my Digital Audio

Question

Recently, a couple of my friends have been giving away their G4 PowerMacs due to their age. Since I've never really had much experience with Macs, (I'm more of a linux/windows guy myself) I decided to take these machines off of their hands, in an effort to further my knowledge about computing history, and to potentially increase my productivity by not making it so darn tempting to play video games.
The machine in question is my G4 Digital Audio. The only specs that I'm aware of are that it has a 733 mhz processor and 512 mb of RAM. There is no Airport card installed and the internal battery (the one keeping the clock on) is dead. I wanted to turn this into a dedicated OS9 machine, so one my pals let me borrow his OS9.2 install disk, which let me succesfully reformat the hard drive and install the operating system. Everything was succesfull until I restarted the mahcine, where it would freeze as soon as the desktop fully loads. The system wouldn't completely freeze up, I was capable of moving the mouse around, but I cannot click on anything and the system clock is frozen. I was able to restart it with extensions, narrowing it down to a problem with one (or more) of the extensions or something wrong with the internal battery.
I'll try to narrow down which extension(s) cause the problem, but if I can't manage to solve the problem I have no idea what else could cause this to happen. Could the dead battery have anything to do with this?
Thanks in advance for any help, it is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It would be a good thing to replace the internal battery; a too-weak or dead one can cause booting irregularities. You can get a replacement at places like Radio Shack for about US$18, cheaper on-line.
You say you used a loaned OS 9.2 install CD. If you mean a gray or bue-label OS 9.2 Software Install CD, that disk would not be valid for a G4 DA model; it may not have been able to install the software that is needed by the hardware on your model.
The G4 DA models came with a model-specific version of OS 9.1 (a retail OS 9.1 Install CD is not adequate), but can also use a retail (white label) OS 9.2.1 Install CD.
Will it boot successfully with Extensions Off? To try that, restart or boot, immediately press the Shift key, keep that held down until you get the message "Extensions Off". Althugh this allows the machine to boot, since most extensions are disabled (off) it presents a very limited system - no internet, no printing, etc. However, it is one way to check the hardware, and can verify that a problem may be caused by an extension conflict.
Freezing at the point that the desktop loads can be caused by several things other than an extension conflict.
Something in the Startup Items folder could be causing that. You can access that when booted with Extensions Off; you'll find that folder in the System Folder.
The Desktop file could be mangled. To replace that, start up holding the Shift key down, When you get the Extensions Off message, relese the Shift key and press both the Command and Option keys, keep them held down until you get a splash screen asking if you want to rebuild the desktop. OK that, and after that process has completed do a normal restart.
When you reformatted the hard drive, did you set the format as Mac OS Extended?