G4 wont boot after "Hard Drive Firmware update"... help!

[Dirty Harry]

Today my old G4/400 (10.3.4) showed through "Software Update" an available hard drive firmware update that would let me know if my hard drive (19 GB) needed the update.

It said it did so I installed... and now my G4 won´t boot. All I get is this white page where I can write in Unix to boot or quit. If I try to boot I get the starting mac os folder icon toggling between a question mark and a happy Mac back and forth but will never really boot. If I quit, the Mac shuts down
and If i reboot, back to the white page and so on... Any thing I could do before I try to reinstall the whole system from the DVD drive?

I hate this:
-you plan a working day on your computer
-something happens
-and all day is wasted!

Thank you!

 

[mkubal]

It sounds like your computer is starting in open firmware. Probably not a good thing.

If you have any disk utilities such as norton or techtool I would suggest starting up from and using them. But that might not work either.

I think there are some things you can reset in open firmware, but I'm no expert. Hopefully someone else here is.

Matt

 

[Makosuke]

That's almost certainly starting into Open Firmware, and it's a bad sign.

The first things to try are to type "reset-nvram" and then "reset-all" on that white command line; your Mac should restart at that point, and although it likely won't do anything worthwhile maybe if you're very lucky it'll help--worth a shot. Then try zapping the PRAM (hold down command-option-p-r at start until the thing chimes three times).

No luck there, try holding down the option key when you hit the power button; I'm not 100% sure on a computer that old, but you should get a screen allowing you to select which disk to boot from; try reselecting yours and hope for the best.

Good luck--I've always skipped installing those updates, and now I'm glad I have.

 

[Dirty Harry]

Everything back to normal, thank you!

Thank you. Really.

Yes, that was open firmware, whatever that is... The computer booted after "reset-nvram" and "reset-all". I only got a message saying the firmware update wasnt finished and if I wanted to cancel and delete unneeded files... wich I obviously did.

Big help. You made my day!

Dirty