eMac won't get past startup screen!

[latergator116]

OK, I've just about had it with this damn eMac! I was updating to 10.3 when it said there wasn't enough space to install, so I did a custom install without all the various languages. When the first disc was finished installing, it just said to restart the computer. When my computer restarts, it justs give me the startup screen and doesn't get beyond that. So, I booted up from the first cd again and repaired the disk, but it still wont get beyond the startup screen. I called up apple twice and they haven't been very helpfull.

[caveman_uk]

Maybe it's because your hard drive is still too full? I presume you backed your important stuff up before you started? If you have a clean install may be your best (only?) option...

[latergator116]

err.. no I didn't. I didnt think I was going to run into a type of problem like this. What if I hooked up my iBook to the computer and used it as an external hard drive. Would that work?

[kylos]

Should work (using firewire target disk mode).

I would imagine that you should be able to archive to cd a fair amount of your files. Your hard drive shouldn't be that small, so I can't imagine that you use all those files (unless they're your personal *ahem* movie collection) with much regularity.

I had a similar situation once reinstalling Jaguar after an hd upgrade. Turns out that the first cd had a scratch on it near the edge that likely corrupted the clean-up script and didn't set the computer to prompt for the next disk.

[latergator116]

Ok. I called apple 3 times and to make a long story short, the directory files on the HD are corrupted and in order to get them working fine I have to do a clean install(erase the hard drive). Like Kyle said, I will try forewire target disk mode, but I have 52 gigs on the eMac and 8 gigs left on the iBook, so go figure. The other thing apple said to do was boot into OS 9 using an OS 9 cd and back up the HD. Only problem is that I don't have an OS 9 cd. So either way I'm screwed.

[kylos]

Guess you'll be burning a lot of cd's then.:D

[latergator116]

Actually thats not such a bad idea, but insted using DVD's, since I have a superdrive.;)