[osxrules]

I have 10.2 on a quicksilver 800MHz G4 with firmware 4.3.3f2 but it won't boot either 10.3 or 10.4. I put the disc in and hold the alt-key but they won't show up on the machine. I've tested the discs on a powerbook and Mac Mini and they work fine so there is a problem with the machine.

I reset the pram on it once but I don't know if that would have made a difference. I don't think there are any firmware updates for this model of machine. It's the 800MHz model of this one:

http://www.welovemacs.com/select-you...ver-2002-.html

What's also weird is it won't install 10.2 combo updates either. It shows the exclamation mark that it can't install.

Is there maybe a way to force boot the installer or get some more advanced feedback on why it won't install?

[Corpse of Chewbacca]

This is a bit bizaare. See if you can boot off of any CD, most importantly Disk Warrior or some such. When a machine fails to boot there can be a multitude of reasons, but if the Combo Update for 10.2 won't run then you have a bit of a strange issue.

Bad optical drive?
Mobo going?
HD failing?
OS futzed?

.......

For kicks try zappign the P-RAM 5 times (6 total restarts).

[asthma]

try startup disk and reboot from the cd. if that deosnt work then try holding c instead of alt.

[Corpse of Chewbacca]

You were holding down alt? Certainly do C instead.

[osxrules]

OK, here's the thing. It's not actually me that was installing the system but my brother of a far less intelligence than what I had previously thought and his description of what was happening led me to think there was a serious problem.

10.2 was on the machine and he couldn't update to 10.2.8. The 10.4 dvd wouldn't boot as I said and nor would 10.3.

He later told me 10.2.5 combo worked so maybe there was something wrong with his 10.2.8 download. I realized what was wrong with the booting by enquiring about the model of the drive and he said it was an atapi cd-rw.

I was like, you moron, how do you expect to boot a dvd on a cd-rw drive?

10.3 wasn't booting because his disc was messed up.

So now I have to go and send him 10.4 on cd. I heard you can also put the DVD installer onto say an ipod partition and install from there and I said that to him but I think he would have to erase his ipod to repartition and he would need to use his work computer with a dvd drive. Still it's supposed to install much faster so it would be worth looking into.

I've had such a headache trying to tell him what to do. The first problem was that he hadn't left enough room on the drive and one of the bsd files screwed up. I'm not sure if they were related but not having enough space meant he couldn't install his system so he installed onto his ipod, booted from it, copied stuff and freed up some space. Then installed the 10.2 system onto the drive, which was all that was available.

However, I had told him before while trying to fix the bad bsd file to try booting into single user mode first then verbose mode and neither worked. But when he re-installed the system, I told him to keep his users with the archive and install option little realising that the verbose mode option had somehow stuck. So when he booted up, it went to a command line and he didn't know what to do.

I told him to set the nvram boot-args to "" and then edit /etc/ttys. But no, too difficult, so he just reinstalled the whole system again, this time not keeping the users . Sigh, stupid people should be shot. But then again who'd run the country?

Thanks for the responses anyhow.