Accidentally Selected Netboot for startup.

Greetings. I'm new to this forum. Would greatly appreciate it if u guys can offer me some advise.

I've this old iBook G4, running on MacOS 9 which I just it just for torrent downloads. I recently made a mistake by selecting Network Startup (dumb@ss mistake) and I restart.

And at startup, all I got was a blinking globe, and after a while it turn into a blinking folder with a question mark.

So I did the next best thing by restarting a system restore CD by pressing C on restart. It totally did not work. Still I get this blinking globe.

I did all sorts of stuff, like removing the battery, I even when to and extend to remove the RAM. That didn't work either.

So now, I'm totally baffled. The bloody blinking globe just won't go away.

Pls help.

Diwali said:

Press opt on start-up and select your HD.

Click to expand...

Thanks for yr reply.

I did that, all I got was a pic of a lock, a bar to type (for password?) and a arrow pic.

Can u pls elaborate further. I do apologise, I suck at this sort of stuff.

Nermal said:

In that case, you have a firmware password set. If you don't know the password then you'll need to remove one stick of RAM then reboot while holding Cmd-Opt-P-R. Keep holding until it chimes three times.

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Thanks for yr reply.

As I mentioned earlier, I did removed the RAM, then holding down Cmd-Opt-P-R and restart. Before it can even chime, it when to the blinking globe again.

I also tried pressing Cmd-Opt-O-F. And that also requires a password, which I don't have. Heck, I didn't even set up any password for the firmware. It just came with the mac when I bought it, which I was totally unaware of.

Nermal said:

Yes, saw that, but it was unclear whether you put it straight back in again. You need to hold Cmd-Opt-P-R on the first boot after adding or removing RAM, so if you took some out earlier then put it back in and hold down the keys.

Click to expand...

Sorry about that. What I did was removed my RAM, restart while Cmd-Opt-P-R (I still got the globe), shutdown, put back RAM, restart again while Cmd-Opt-P-R. And still got the globe.

It's really frustrating. Why can't it boot with my system restore CD?

Nermal said:

Hmm, I'm not sure what to suggest then. You can't boot from CD because you have a password set; the purpose of a firmware password is to prevent booting from a device other than the one set in the Startup Disk control panel. That's also why it's not defaulting back to the hard drive after failing to find a Netboot server.

Click to expand...

You've been most helpful. Thank you very much.

If you or anyone can offer me some assistance. I would appreciate it.

Bump

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FYI, is there anyway I can 'force' initialise the HDD? I've nothing important inside this Mac.

Pls. help.