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aizat

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 17, 2004
1
0
I was running Onyx 1.5.4b and then walked away, leaving it to do its job. Screen turned black, and I thought it was just the password lock that goes on if i left it for 15 minutes, shake the mouse, enter password, and the password screen dissappears and goes away. But the screen remains blank. Worried, I forced restart my iMac 800mhz LCD. The iMac now refuses to start in OS 10.3, and it reboots perfectly fine in 9.2, on another partition, same harddrive.

I don't mind reinstalling 10.3 but my iMacis having problems with its DVDr. It reads very few limited discs, which work fine on other computers as i have tested, and when it burns there comes out disc errors. Also i get an error around the lines off "Buffer underrun drained out before process could begin." I've put my panther cd's in but they just wont read.

I currently live in Malaysian and the apple store here charges outrageous prices to fix anything. I have several options.

A. Go to the apple store and see how much they charge. I BET ALOT.
B. Buy an external 5.2" case and a new drive, and connect it via firewire to the computer.
C. Open the iMac up itself, and replace the drive manually. I saw it in a mac magazine in the library, can't remember which one specifically but its possible. MOST RISKIOUS solution though.
D. Boot up in commandline mode and run cron scripts there to fix the comp.

I like option B & D the best, and D would be the easiest solution right now. If someone could tell me, how to run the scripts and do the stuff that would be much appreciated. Any other help is also greatly appreciated.
 

AnotherMortal

macrumors regular
Jan 14, 2003
148
1
Baltimore
Invest in a copy of Norton Utilities, Disk Warrior, or Drive Tool.

Many people here strongly dislike Norton Utilities, but I finally got a copy of Diskwarrior and it didn't fix the problems a MDD G4 had booting. (wouldn't boot to OS 9 or OS X) Ran NU and fixed several errors in the Volume Header Block and unix system files, and re-blessed the drive, now it boots.

If you have access to another mac, you can mount your iMac in Target Disk Mode and run NU or DW off of the 2nd Mac and repair problems with your iMac's internal HD.

As for the DVD not working right, buy a Lacie external DVD+/-/everything firewire drive. They are about $200 USD, and are OS 9/ OS X bootable.
 
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