[shining-nickel17]

hey all...I have a PowerMac G4 (500Mhz, 640Mb RAM). I went to install the 10.4.9 upgrade and when i ran the installer all was going well, it gets part way through the installation and quits. I restarted the computer, it boots as far as the loading OS X screen. The loading bar remains at zero and nothing happens. Running the "fsck - yf" repair in single user mode accomplishes nothing, it tries to repair itself 3 times and then fails. I currently have NO OS X install disc, but will probably have to work on getting one. Anyone have any ideas?

[dowNNshift]

Can you boot in Safe Boot Mode, holding down the shift key?

At what exact point does it hang? At the blue screen before your desktop shows up, or on the gray screen with a spinning gear?

[shining-nickel17]

I can't boot into safe mode or do anything. The only thing I think I may be able to get away with is booting from a CD/DVD and reinstalling Tiger.

It hangs just after the spinning gear screen the blue screen with the box in the middle that says Mac OS X and then the loading bar underneath.

[dowNNshift]

So its hanging after kernel is run (spinning gear) but before launchd (blue screen)...

Yikes... sounds like the installer hung when it was doing some updates to the system folder.

Do you have access to another Mac so that you can run your PowerMac in target drive mode? This way you could backup your vital data before doing an archive and re-install.

If you can, I'd go ahead and try booting from the OS X install disk and running disk utility and repair permissions to see if that at least gets to you safe boot -- but most likely you'll have to target drive off your files and reload Mac OS X.

[shining-nickel17]

yeah, its pretty messed up, I don't really have any files on that G4 yet, as I was about to use it as an iTunes server. I'll suppose I'll have to get my hands on an OS X disc and reinstall. Thanks for the help!

[shining-nickel17]

So now my system boots beyond the gray screen (with spinning gear) and past the loading OS X screen...but before it can get to the user account/login window it gets stuck at a blue screen (also has a spinning gear)...and does nothing at this point...and suggestions?

[Tsilou B.]

If you have a second PPC Mac, start your PowerMac in target disk mode and connect it to the other PPC Mac. Download the OS X 10.4.9 combo updater from Apple - Support - Downloads - Mac OS X 10.4.9 Combo Update (PPC) . Start the installation and when it asks on what hard drive you want to install, choose the PowerMac's hard drive. After the installation, everything should work again.

If you have a second Mac, but that one is an Intel Mac, it's more complicated. Start your PowerMac in target disk mode and connect it to the other Mac. Download the OS X 10.4.9 combo updater from Apple - Support - Downloads - Mac OS X 10.4.9 Combo Update (PPC) . Mount the disk image and copy the .pkg file to the root of the PowerMac's hard drive and write down the exact name of the pkg file. Restart the PowerMac in single user mode. Type

sh /etc/rc

If that works, you should get a command prompt again after some time. If the command gets stuck somewhere for more than a minute, press CTRL-C a few times, until you get to the command prompt again.
Then try this command:

/usr/sbin/installer -pkg /exactname.pkg -target /

where exactname is the exact name of the pkg file. If you're lucky, the system is still able to install the package and after the installation is finished, you can restart the Mac and it will work again.

If it doesn't work or you don't have a second Mac or a FireWire cable, then it's probably easier to get a Mac OS X CD and reinstall.

[shining-nickel17]

well thanks for the tips, but i'm worse off than that now....the hard drive is completely erased (no OS or anything) and when I boot from a 10.4 DVD the system crashes...but thanks for the tip, any other ideas?

[ralfh73]

Hi Tsilou B,

I just want to say THANK YOU for this great solution. I tried starting up in every possible user mode but nothing worked.

Your Solution (simple as it turned out) worked great and my MAC is doing it's work as it did before.

Thanks again.
Ralf