Won't boot up, it says "Waiting for local disks"

Question

The other day I got a warning that I was running out of disk space and that I should delete some files off my computer. I was going to do that, but I didn't for some reason and then shut down the computer. Now when I try to start up the computer it will start booting up--but then it gets to, "Waiting for local disks" and won't go past that. Will a 512mb internal memory card solve the problem?

Answer 1

Ridders3425's tip on holding the mouse button down on startup should work fine. You should be aware that when burning a disc, you really need at least as much free space on the hard drive as the size of the disc being burned; e.g., about 640MB for CD-R, 4.7 GB for DVD-R. Allowing a few hundred MB for the system swap files, and you get the rule of thumb to keep 1 to 5 GB free space on the hard drive. That's to allow for creation of the temporary scratch files that are creating durning the burning process. That puts you in a Catch-22 situation when you get the running of of drive space warning: you needd to delete some files to gain space, but you can't really back anything up safely without free space to start with.
Do you have access to another Mac? You could then use a Firewire cable to connect the two and try to boot your eMac as the target disk; refer to How to use FireWire target disk mode. You can then use the other Mac to perform the backup of files and to remove enough unneeded filed from the eMac to permit it to boot.