[jollygrizzly]

Hello all,

I was wondering if you can help me as I'm going nuts and I'm pretty sure my wife will kill me when she gets home if I cant resolve this! I bought a brand new iMac and received it via post 3 days ago. Because I bought it online and signed up for a monthly payment thing, it came with Tiger (I am awaiting Leopard in the post). It's been working great although my pc modem is incompatible with the Intel processor. So at the moment I'm online only with my laptop. It was all working great until I wanted to change my iPod from windows to mac. After consulting iLounge I downloaded the appropriate files but was unable to install them because certain updates had not yet been installed on the iMac. So I started to download OS X updates from the apple downloads onto my Zip drive, then uploaded and installed them on the iMac. Not all of them worked as apparently I needed the installer update (which wouldn't install as apparently it was already there!?!) So...all of a sudden the iMac froze out running applications but I could still move the cursor around and select things. I attempted to force quit everything that was running to no avail, attempted to restart, which did not happen. I then pressed and held the on/off button to reset the iMac.

On startup I was glad to hear the 'gong' but the grey/white screen that usually loads the apple logo and the Kernel is now (and has been for the last 45 minutes) flashing the Apple, a dark grey folder with a question-mark in it, and a dark gray circle with a stroke through the center (like a British 'STOP' sign).

I feel like an idiot because I couldn't be patient for my new router/modem to arrive. I bought the imac to reduce the amount of time I was constantly repairing and installing new software on my pc.

Please, please, please help (my life literally depends on it!!)
I do have the Tiger installation discs

Warmest regards and many thanks

JG

[Pierre B.]

I cannot imagine any way in which a modem could damage a computer because of "incompatibility". Well, except the one of power surges, but this is different.

But it seems that you have screwed up your OS X installation. Since you have the install disks, I would say try to wipe the hard drive and install Mac OS X clean from the beginning.

[jollygrizzly]

So would I just insert the installation cd on startup because it wont go past the startup screen?

[jollygrizzly]

I'm reinstalling Tiger right now. Thank you for your very sound advice and help. I should learn patience.

Regards

JG

[Pierre B.]

Originally Posted by jollygrizzly 

I'm reinstalling Tiger right now. Thank you for your very sound advice and help. I should learn patience.

Regards

JG

You are welcome and good luck with the installation. If nothing else is wrong, this should solve your problems.

[ibook_steve]

Modem? Zip drive? I just flashed back to 1998!



But what is this about changing your iPod from Windows to Mac? They're all the same. You shouldn't have to do anything.

Steve

[::maroma::]

Originally Posted by ibook_steve 

Modem? Zip drive? I just flashed back to 1998!



But what is this about changing your iPod from Windows to Mac? They're all the same. You shouldn't have to do anything.

Steve

Not exactly. If his iPod was formatted for Windows it uses a different file format (not sure which one). He needs to reformat it for HFS+ if he wants to use it on his Mac.

[seanc]

Originally Posted by ::maroma:: 

Not exactly. If his iPod was formatted for Windows it uses a different file format (not sure which one). He needs to reformat it for HFS+ if he wants to use it on his Mac.

It should have been fine if it was Fat32. If it was NTFS then he would have had to change it.

[analogika]

iPods are formatted either FAT32 or HFS+.

A Windows-formatted iPod will work JUST FINE on a Mac. You won't be able to update or restore the iPod software though - that requires reformatting it for Mac.

A Mac-formatted iPod WILL NOT work with Windows, because Windows is format-stupid.

[ghporter]

What analogika says. And you have either HFS or FAT32, NOT NTFS on your iPod-iTunes is smart enough to make sure your iPod WILL work with a Mac no matter what.

BUT... As a recently fully-switched switcher, there's a strong urge to move all the way to Mac and not have any of the remnants of Windows lying around. Besides, iTunes will tell you "this iPod is set up to synchronize with a different computer; would you like to change it to synchronize with this one?" and if the iPod shows up as a Windows iPod, that could look like "you gotta change the iPod's format to Mac." Just speculation, but that's how the situation could confuse someone.

I think the OS X gooberage would have been caused by glitchy and/or incomplete data transfers via the ZIP drive.

[ibook_steve]

Originally Posted by analogika 

iPods are formatted either FAT32 or HFS+.

A Windows-formatted iPod will work JUST FINE on a Mac. You won't be able to update or restore the iPod software though - that requires reformatting it for Mac.

A Mac-formatted iPod WILL NOT work with Windows, because Windows is format-stupid.

I guess I haven't configured a new iPod in a while. When you first set it up, you're saying that iTunes will automatically format it FAT32 or HFS+ depending on the computer you use? I thought at this point that it would always format it FAT32 so it would easily work on both Macs and PCs. That's how new USB memory sticks are usually initially formatted, I thought.

I remember when the iPod first became available for Windows that Apple sold separate Mac and Windows versions of the hardware (and before iTunes went cross-platform). So was that just how the drive was formatted?

Steve

[analogika]

Originally Posted by ibook_steve 

I guess I haven't configured a new iPod in a while. When you first set it up, you're saying that iTunes will automatically format it FAT32 or HFS+ depending on the computer you use?

Yes.

Originally Posted by ibook_steve 

I thought at this point that it would always format it FAT32 so it would easily work on both Macs and PCs.

No.