I installed OSX on my machine, thought it was ok for now (tho a little slow)
I was doing just fine using my machine with macOS9 and then I had to re-install macOS9. After this, I could no longer boot my machine from OS9 directly so I had to go into OSX and boot OS9 through classic (which has killed my multiprocessor features in photoshop and Cinema4D) - - I installed OS9 on another partiion I have but to no success. I can boot off the macOS9 cd and thats it. I've tried Disk First Aid, Norton Utilities, and FSCK-Y in unix, resetting my p-ram 3 times, re-installing macOS9, re-installing OSX, and even booting into firmware and using multiple clear or reset commands people have suggested online.
So far all I have to look forward to is formatting 30gigs or waiting for carbon software.
I do have some light to shed on the subject- I am 95% positive it's all linked to a partition called "MOSX_Booter" - which contains a 1k system and finder among other things. I've gotten it to appear on other machines generally after a partition has been formatted, or after I had to really fix something with Norton. It is this partition I am convinced my machine may be trying to start up on since I get a happy mac and then the hard drive stops loading.
Anyway, It's there, its a partition, I think its corrupting the drive, and I can't for the life of me boot into 9.
More light - The image file for this partition is called HFS_Booter.img, and it's located on the Mac OSX Public Beta CD in system/Installation/CDIS/
so you can get a look at what I'm talking about. Would I be correct in saying that if I remove the system off of this partition it would fix my problems?
Please email me at
" [email protected] "
I'm desperate to fix this problem!!
Thanks

[lfrancis]

Both OS 9 and OS X need to live in the first 8 gigs of your hard drive or your Open Firmware won't be able to find a system to boot.

Think this might be your problem?

[tomp]

I'm experiencing the same problems that you describe, except I have MacOSX and an unbootable MacOS 8.6 partition on my hard drive (a bronze Powerbook). I've also tried reformatting the MacOS 8.6 HFS+ partition and reinstalling MacOS 8.6, reinstalling MacOS X, setting the boot-device in OpenFirmware by hand and resetting the PRAM. I can boot into MacOS X, but not into MacOS 8.6. If you find out anything useful, please let us know.

[tomp]

'some' told me in a private e-mail that Alsoft DiskWarrior was able to repair his drive and make it possible to boot from MacOS 9 again. I've ordered DiskWarrior and am keeping my fingers crossed...

[Gregory]

I thought the 8GB rule was only regarding Beige G3, not New World.

System Disk 3.1 should be able to update and change the OF boot partition. You say you manually changed OF boot-device "setenv" but that is only temporary until you do a shutdown and it gets lost.

setenv boot-device ultra0:,\\tbxi will look at the first device on the bus.

I thought that MacOSX_Booter was only installed when UFS was used, not when HFS+.

It is for these reasons that I was waiting for 9.1 and the next beta to reinstall OS X so that these setup and install problems are fixed, only now we are being "asked" to wait for January so that there can be something to announce, rather than try to get the OS updated, fixed, and further along - in part because it (always) takes longer than expected and 9.1 is proving difficult.

I've had best luck using a dedicated small 4GB disk drive with just OS X on it off Adaptec 2930CU rather than on ATA master. And that way I can reformat - which I've had to do too often.

An updated Drive Setup seems essential, along with improving Disk First Aid. You should not have to need to use 3rd party utilities to fix your drives to use both, although having 8.6 on the same drive might be a problem. I'd suggest getting the 9.0.4 update and pull Drive Setup and DFA off it to use and update the driver first.

System Disk 2.3.1 and 3.1 ought still to be on Apple's site if you search.

Gregory

Some - if you selected the button to be notified when this thread is updated, no need for email - it will automatically alert you.

Yes it is true, I fixed the problem by using Alsoft Diskwarrior 2.0 - Norton just doesn't seem to cut it. I'd like to have responded earlier but because I had to come here on another computer, my password and username were not stored in my cookie (I don't think we should even need them, MacNN?!) so I just had to make up for the lost days I had in OSX and didn't think twice.
I don't really know what the problem truly amounted to, but I must say being 'trapped' in OSX was certainly a fun experience. Saddly because I have an MP mac PPP doesn't allow me to log on for very long- anywhere from 5min - 15min (this is a real issue posted in Apple's Tech Info Library) which unfortunately forced me to go back . I did make a numerous amount of hacks to the classic environment and OSX itself to reduce its memory usage, got classic to run with a bit more horsepower, brought back it's true "platinum" look by swapping the finder and Classic Support, and finally forced classic to boot with 8.6. Like it or not, classic is nothing more than an emulator in a boxed window which then goes full screen, it even has the latest *real* Macintosh Rom stored inside. Though it wasn't usable under 8.6 it actually booted (and quit shortly after). One day I will resume my fun little hacks, but until then a program called "xFiles" is your source for delving deep into your Application's properties. You too can take apart your classic environment and not crash your machine :-)

[tomp]

Hi, I wanted to mention that I never did get my MacOS 8.6 partition to boot again, and was told by the Alsoft tech support people that they had never heard of anyone successfully keeping a bootable 8.6 partition after installing MacOSX PB. After two weeks of beating my head against the wall on this, I finally gave up.

Instead, I installed MacOS 9.0.4 from CD onto the partition where I'd had 8.6, reinstalled MacOS X afterwards, and now I can once again boot into either system. Classic works from MacOSX this way, too, so I'm pretty happy with it.

Incidentally, I was told categorically by a Mac tech at a well-known Mac repair place here in New York that it was

(a) impossible to boot from a MacOS 9 CD after installing OS X on your machine, and,
(b) impossible to install MacOS 9 *after* installing MacOS X and having it work correctly.

The first assertion is obviously ignorant (your ability to boot from CD has nothing to do with what's installed on your hard disk), but I think the second comes from an overly harsh interpretation of the rather vague warnings about compatibility in the MacOSX install instructions. Anyway, I was happy to verify that both statements were wrong and I mention them in case anyone reading this gets similarly 'expert' advice when trying to deal with MacOSX boot problems.

Cheers,

TomP