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Richard Clark · Mar 26, 2003, 12:41 PM

G4/867 DP
512 MB RAM
Mac OS X 10.2.4

The gal who has this machine couldn't connect up to the servers this morning. So she restarted her machine. A two inch by two inch square with the earth showed up flashing.

After a couple minutes it disapears and then the small Mac OS 9 flashing folder/question mark appeared. But somehow her machine did end up booting into OS X later on by itself.

This all happened before I came into work.

But this morning after I got here her Freehand (Running Classic) locked. I restarted and booted as a single user (command S) and ran FSCK. No problems restarted machine and boom - there was the earth. And then a little while longer it went to the OS 9 folder/question mark.

I booted from Mac OS X Install CD and ran Disk Utility (First Aid). It didn't find anything wrong. So I restarted again. Same thing. So I booted from a homemade OS 9 emergency disk. Went into Startup Disk Control Panel, selected the OS X "System" and restarted. Everything worked fine.

So I solved the problem. But my question is - When a flashing earth comes up is that the same thing as in 9 with the flashing folder/question mark saying it can't find the System?

I now know about holding X down as well. So if that opportunity comes up I'll try it.

I ran a search on here regarding startup thinking that I might find something just to verify my assumption. But there wasn't anything regarding that icon.

It just seems weird that OS X would lose it's way of finding the "System". From what I know, the gal who has this machine always stays in X and doesn't go into the System Preferences.

Always something new to learn.

SoClose · Mar 26, 2003, 02:12 PM

It sounds as if the system has lost the ability to tell which system folder is the blessed folder. Have you tried rebooting into Mac OS 9 and using the Startup Disk control panel to select the correct System Folder? Another thing to try is to hold down the option key at startup and explicitly select the disk with the appropriate System Folder on it.

gorickey · Mar 26, 2003, 02:38 PM

I am glad you fixed the problem...you fixed it when you re-selected the StartUp Disk....why?? Because somehow your machine thought it was booting off a server (NetBoot) and was looking for an image to boot off of from the server...that is what that icon means.

Hope that helps.