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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > Can't change startup disk without crashing

Can't change startup disk without crashing
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artod4789
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Join Date: Feb 2008
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Feb 22, 2008, 09:24 AM
 
Hey all, quick question for you (and sorry for the length). A little while ago, I was playing online when I got mac's version of the bsod telling me I had to force restart my machine. It did this for a while (I would boot up, it wouldn't get to the login screen before giving me the force reboot screen again) until I left it alone for a night.

The next morning I was able to boot it up, and ran disk utility to verify the disk. The first few times I ran it, it kept giving me an error saying some file name or something was throwing an error and it failed. After rebooting it several times and deleting a whole slew of files from it, the verify finally worked and said the disk is ok.

However, there is still one problem I am having. The first time disk utility failed, I tried to change my startup disk to my OSX install disk to run disk utility from that, but when I tried, it just stalled at the white screen with the gray apple logo. And even though verify goes through fine now, and says that my hard disk is ok, changing the startup disk still fails.

Any thoughts on A) what the issue may be, and B) how to deal with it?

Thanks!!!
     
ibook_steve
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: San Jose, CA
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Feb 22, 2008, 10:26 AM
 
Welcome to the MacNN forums!

Which machine? Which version of the OS? How much memory? Hard drive size and space remaining? This could be any of a number of issues from a dying hard drive or bad OS install to even bad memory. Try resetting the power manager and PRAM and provide more info about your situation. That may help in diagnosing.

Steve
Celebrating 10 years and 4000 posts on MacNN!
     
artod4789  (op)
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Feb 22, 2008, 11:15 AM
 
Sorry, missed that info. It's a G4 powerbook 1.67 running osx 10.4.something. How do I reset the power manager and PRAM?
     
tripletaker
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Atlanta
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Feb 22, 2008, 11:37 AM
 
Restart the computer while holding the Command+Option+P+R keys on the keyboard.
     
   
 
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