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mdc · Mar 27, 2003, 05:20 PM

since this is my first mac and i am still learning, i was playing around this morning and i went into startup disk in system preferences and chose to boot to os 9.2.2 and clicked restart.

the ibook rebooted and greeted me with a little folder with a blinking ? in it. after a call to apple support, it came out that i should just reinstall os X, since i could not get anywhere and had no way to boot X.

so after a reinstall of X, saving my home folder and all my precious work, X is working fine, and i have locked the startup disk area of system preferences and finished getting everything how it was, 10.2.4 and all the updatres.

one thing i have noticed is that my boot up time of os X is *blazingly* faster than it was before the reboot. some other things seem a tad slower, like opening my 4 programs when i login.

questions:
it is just my computer that f**ks out when i try boot to os 9.2.2?
hypothetically speaking, if the clear the disk and start again option of os X install was chosen, would classic still exist for os9 software *in* X?

thanks

boardsurfer · Mar 27, 2003, 05:38 PM

Well, all I can offer you is that the reinstall was not necessary. If you boot holding the option key you will be asked what OS you want to boot.

mdc · Mar 27, 2003, 06:08 PM

doh!

thanks anyway

Spheric Harlot · Mar 27, 2003, 06:25 PM

Originally posted by boardsurfer:
Well, all I can offer you is that the reinstall was not necessary. If you boot holding the option key you will be asked what OS you want to boot.

Not true.

Holding down option, it will ask you what *partition* you wish to boot from.

Doesn't do you any good if you have X and 9 on the same partition.

I believe holding down the X key on restart will force booting into OS X.

-s*

moonmonkey · Mar 27, 2003, 11:11 PM

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
Not true.

Holding down option, it will ask you what *partition* you wish to boot from.

Doesn't do you any good if you have X and 9 on the same partition.

I believe holding down the X key on restart will force booting into OS X.

-s*

correct!

bradoesch · Mar 28, 2003, 11:25 AM

Boy, that's pretty sad of Apple support.

step · Mar 28, 2003, 07:58 PM

sometimes the mac just forgets where it's at, all you need do is boot from an os9 install cd (if your mac's old enough!) and reselect your startup folder in the control panel

Terri · Mar 28, 2003, 08:27 PM

Originally posted by step:
sometimes the mac just forgets where it's at, all you need do is boot from an os9 install cd (if your mac's old enough!) and reselect your startup folder in the control panel

I've seen this many times. Having a FireWire drive with a bootable system on it can really save the day.

Superchicken · Mar 28, 2003, 10:05 PM

yeah you know I had the same thing happen with OS 9 once! Like right after I got my iMac it was really weird, the guys told me to just reinstall and junk when really all they would have needed to do was tell me to insert the OS CD and hold C and I could have fixed it.. oh well sometimes support people suck...

Jerommeke · Mar 29, 2003, 03:18 AM

Originally posted by bradoesch:
Boy, that's pretty sad of Apple support.

I don't know how Apple support is commonly, but overhere ppls at helpdesks do reguraly not know necessarily more then you if you are a novice user. Most of the times it's something like "Yeah, we got an error, we are working on it, bye."

Geobunny · Mar 30, 2003, 09:11 AM

From my experience, people in call centres are usually a bunch of numpties who don't know which way is up!

To be fair to Apple, they seem to have the best of a bad crop, but the first question is nearly always "Ok, so you've restarted and still have the problem. Have you tried reinstalling?"

A while ago I was having a problem with my internal (Apple supplied) CDRW drive, in that it wouldn't write CDs. The only advice the Apple Helpdesk person gave me was to backup all my data and reinstall. When asked how I should back up my data, the woman replied "Write it onto CDs and keep them in a safe place". Sorry, but how stupid can you get?! I ended up borrowing a hard drive from work and reinstalling on that....and what d'you know, same problem!

Sorry, rant over!

PS. I think the startup key is command-X, isn't it? Just holding X never used to work for me. Also, that only works for a single startup, not successive ones. You need to get back into System prefs and set your startup disk again.

CharlesS · Mar 30, 2003, 02:44 PM

Good grief, if something had really been made askew by switching the boot disk, it would have just been a simple PRAM error that could have been solved by zapping the PRAM (command-option-P-R at startup).

Whoever told you to reinstall ==

step · Mar 30, 2003, 04:32 PM

Originally posted by step:
sometimes the mac just forgets where it's at, all you need do is boot from an os9 install cd (if your mac's old enough!) and reselect your startup folder in the control panel

btw, anyway to fix this on non os9 bootable macs yet? pram zaps good, but not infallible

mactechie · Mar 31, 2003, 10:39 AM

Zapping PRAM is good. On the new non OS 9 machines, this shouldn't be too much of an issue, as the start up pane won't show Mac OS 9. A stuck grey screen is more likely than a flashing ?

Try booting From Mac OS X install disk one and running first aid and/or repair priviledges.
As a nudge this usually works fine...

boardsurfer · Mar 31, 2003, 01:41 PM

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
Not true.

Holding down option, it will ask you what *partition* you wish to boot from.

Doesn't do you any good if you have X and 9 on the same partition.

I believe holding down the X key on restart will force booting into OS X.

-s*

whoops - I have multiple partitions. I didnt know that it would only work that way. Sorry.