[athom108]

so i tinkered with a 3rd party piece of sw i shouldn't have and now i'm stuck with the blue screen (nice blue color but it doesn't get me where i need to go)
i tried reinstalling osx from the original cd i had when jaguar first came out, but it tells me i can't reinstall over a newer version that's already on board (i guess that happens when you upgrade with the regular software updates from apple)
i tried disk utility with the install disc
tried rebooting with extensions off, etc

how do i fix this
1. buy the latest install disc? (ugh)
2. reformat the drive?
any other ideas?
thx

[Art Vandelay]

The simplest choice is to choose Archive and Install while preserving users and network settings. The default option is to upgrade which, as you have discovered, is not allowed.

[Geobunny]

What software were you playing with? Can this maybe be solved by booting into single-user mode (hold down cmd-S when you hear the startup chime and let go when you get white text on a black screen) and deleting a startup item?

At what point are you stuck with the blue screen? When trying to log in? At the end of startup? At the start of start up? We need more details to go on.

I've recovered OS X for many people who were on the brink of taking the tried-and-tested Windows problem-solving method of reinstalling. People have even told me that if you screw up your NetInfo database "you've had it" but it's simply not true.

I'm a firm believer of old-school Mac problem-solving methods, and they still seem to work. I've never yet had to reinstall OS X. Give us more to go on and we'll do our best to fix you!

[athom108]

i did it the old fashioned way. i went back to the 3rd party software (themechanger) and looked for some info on what to do if things go wrong. luckily the author had a fix it procedure where you boot up using cmd-s, then entering "tcfix" and that fixed it