[bosolevu]

When booting up my Dual 1GHz G4 the screen freezes on the start up screen. It says "Waiting for local disks" and just stays there and does nothing. I try to boot up using my start up disks but it wont even let me do that! Help anyone? I keep restarting the machine but it just stays on that same page.

[Link]

If you have pro speakers, unplug them. Might want to check the jumper settings on your hard drives too.

[littlegreenspud]

Have you tried starting with your System install CD?

If it does start, use the disk utility to check/repair the disk and fix the permissions.

If it will not start, try holding "Command" and "S" to start into single user mode and run "fsck -y", you may need to run "fsck -yf" as Panther's journalling will tell you there is no need to run fsck, don't believe it!

Good Luck

P.S. mine sometimes sits on the "Waiting for local disks" for a while too, though it eventually gets around to starting!

[Tariq-1]

If you have any external FW drives hooked up, disconnect them. I have had an issue before with the external drives not spinning up and getting the exact same error. you can later plug them back in and they should be recognized. Also, to start up from the CD, either hold dosn the C key or hold the option key down and you will be presented with a choice of start up discs when starting up.

Tariq

Originally posted by bosolevu:
When booting up my Dual 1GHz G4 the screen freezes on the start up screen. It says "Waiting for local disks" and just stays there and does nothing. I try to boot up using my start up disks but it wont even let me do that! Help anyone? I keep restarting the machine but it just stays on that same page.

[SSharon]

I'm using a dual MDD and the first three times I restarted in panther everything was great. I put it on a second hard drive and all was well. then one time after apple's security update I restarted and 'waiting for local disks' came up. I guess it timed out b/c it just skipped it and finished, but my original HD wasn't maounted. system profiler found it so did disk utility and so did drive 10. I clicked mount and there it was as if nothing was wrong.

But there was. I repaired checked then permissions then checked disk and then clicked repair. It seemed like it was doing a good job until it finished and said disk could not be repaired due to invalid file count (its off by two) Drive 10 also gave me some error and couldn't fix it.

The next time I resarted it waited on start up, and I thought it timed out again, but there it was on the desktop.

This sounds like your issue so check for that invalid file count and see if you can come up with a solution.

[Tariq-1]

Given all the problems with external FW drives and Panther(both 800 and 400!), I would suggest not booting up or shutting down with the drive mounted. Personally, I'm sticking with Jag on my MDD until this issue gets sorted out. Check out macfixit, xlr8yourmac and macintouch for more info on the FW/Panther issue.

Tariq

Originally posted by SSharon:
I'm using a dual MDD and the first three times I restarted in panther everything was great. I put it on a second hard drive and all was well. then one time after apple's security update I restarted and 'waiting for local disks' came up. I guess it timed out b/c it just skipped it and finished, but my original HD wasn't maounted. system profiler found it so did disk utility and so did drive 10. I clicked mount and there it was as if nothing was wrong.

But there was. I repaired checked then permissions then checked disk and then clicked repair. It seemed like it was doing a good job until it finished and said disk could not be repaired due to invalid file count (its off by two) Drive 10 also gave me some error and couldn't fix it.

The next time I resarted it waited on start up, and I thought it timed out again, but there it was on the desktop.

This sounds like your issue so check for that invalid file count and see if you can come up with a solution.

[yazarim]

I have had this problem for at least 6 months and tried everything. I even reformatted my Startup Disk and reinstalled Panther from scratch. Nothing. Then, yesterday, by mere chance I unplugged the Wireless IntelliPoint Microsoft Mouse having a need to restart in Classic. I had immediately a kernel panic (You must restart and so on). Well, I unplugged the Microsoft Mouse, plugged the very good and nice Apple Mouse and restarted. Since then things have worked smoothly like silk.
Since this has happened a lot of times (I repeat: I have tried everything possibile and impossible, without giving one single thought to the Mouse), and everytime the problem reappeared, it is definitely possibile that the problem appears again in my next Startup. But if any of you have a similar *wireless* device, could they please give it a try and contribute their experiences? Thanks.
P.S: But remember that one or two restarts are not enough to guarantee anything