[blackfish]

Hello All. I would very much appreciate if any of you could help me out. I have replaced the hard drive in a friends imac g4 800mhz. When I start the computer up to install the OS on the new hard drive, it gives me a gray screen followed by a folder icon with a mac os face and a question mark alternately flashing inside the folder. I have held down c as thew computer starts up, as this is what the OSX instaLL disk instructed, but it doesn't launch an installer. I have tried to use a external cdrom, but that did not work either. I have the jumpers set to master disk and the drive is a seagate barracuda, which should be compatible. Can anyone tell me what I am doing incorrectly? Thank you for your time and assistance.
James

[Dork.]

Welcome!

You're getting the mac with a question mark icon because the boot loader can't find the system on the new hard drive. It's curious that you can't boot from the CD by holding down "c" -- that should work.

Try holgin down "option" as you boot next time -- this should show a menu with all the bootable volumes (including the CD, if it's in the drive) highlighted, and you can choose which one to run.

[blackfish]

Thanks for your reply Dork! (no really, thanks My friend has now said that he had problems with the cd drive, called a certified mac guy and the mac guy said it was the hard drive. I will try the option key. One "stupid" question though, should I hold the option/c keys as soon as I hit the power button, or after the chime or after the screen flashes the first time? in other words at what point during the boot do I press the option key? Thanks again, I really hope I can get this thing working. I used to have a G4 tower, but had to sell it to move, I MISS MY MAC! Thanks.
James