[daaznfella2]

i have been informed that i need to run the software repair program off of a mac OS 8.5 or 9 cd, and in my post a guy posted this link
http://www.applerescue.com/page2/page2.html

i just wanted to know if i could purchase the 9.2.2 disk and use boot up my system from there

or do i HAVE to use the 9.0.4 disK?



THIS WAS MY ORIGINAL POST

Lemme just start off by stating that i am a COMPLETE NOOB to this computer. it was handed down to me YEARS ago by my brother when he went to school and i've never had a problem with it, untill the last week

the Computer i am using is a powermac 8500 series, it is running on mac os9.6 i believe

mhz/ram/etc etc, i have NO clue about what so ever, i am sorry, i'm just not a real techy type of guy....

anyways here is my prob



the other week i was having problems with the mac. it had some rescued files in the recycle bin that wouldn't erase, it would always tell me that it can't ifnd the files to erase or something. they were a rescued item from the hardrive, and some quicktime plug in.

now one day i simply decided to restart my computer, however RIGHT WHEN IT WENT TO THE START UP SCREEN, where it shows you MAC OS 9.6 and WELCOME, a message popped up and it had the restart button on it. So i did so, and it shot me the the question mark/folder screen.

now in this situation, i tried rebooting the computer first already without extensions and it still told me to restart. So i restarted with the restore disk, HOWEVER i noticed that there was a crack on my disk, so it sorta kinda works.

So the computer would restart but in mac os7.xxx. My files that are originally on the computer are visible, but nothing works since it all required 8.5 or later. and since my disk is cracked, restoring files on system/computer/etc is nearly impossible and actually didn't work...

now i think and know that it's time to replace the computer, if so...i have a few questions i hope you guys here can sincerely help me with

1) how can i backup my old files? i can't burn anything with toast because i am using a external burner via USB, not SCSI.

2) can i literally take out the hard drive and use it on any computer that's NOT os 9.6? i ask because i have access to a PC with windows XP and a computer that has mac OS X on there. If so what exactly do i have to do?

3) is there a solution to the questoin mark+folder problem i should do? again i am a novice/noob so anything you say that you would THINK i would suppose to already know, i probably dont, so please be kind with describing what to do

4)would bringing it to an old apple/mac technician be any good? would they be able to fix/back up my harddrive? and if they "back it up", how do they do it?

5) anything i dind't mention?


i sincerely appreciate you guys reading this problem and i look forward to seeing what kinda of solutions i can do, thanks again folks!

[Cadaver]

Its been a long time since I've used a pre-OS X machine, but I'd think that you'd be best off with the most recent version of 9.x you can find.

A folder icon with a flashing question mark at startup indicates that the computer can't find a valid/working System folder. Reinstalling OS 9.x should solve your problem.

Just don't reformat (initialize) your hard drive if you don't have backups of your documents. You do keep backups, don't you?