Broken Folder on EMac

To me, this sounds like software corruption. Broken folder usually means it started to try to boot the machine, but then something went wrong, usually corruption.

Zap the PRAM by booting with apple-option-p-r held down, till you hear the boot tone at least 3 times, then follow these instructions:

Hold C to try to boot off the CD again, with fresh PRAM.

If that fails reboot again holding Apple-Option-Shift-Delete down, this will tell the comptuer to only try to boot from the CD drive, even if it does not think it is bootable.

If this fails, it can possibly still be software corruption on that drive.
I then suggest that you take it into a repair shop, because physically getting to that hard drive is a pain that you don't want to ever experience.

 

Start from the OS 9 disk and rebuild the desktop on the drive (command-option before desktop appears or as icons dance across bottom), run disk first aid, and then switch over to OS X and run fsck -y, and disk first aid.

Remember if any of these find an error, keep running it until it finds none.

As a last resort try unplugging it (or turning off the power strip) and then starting, or hitting the PMU reset switch (just one time after grounding yourself).

 

Try booting from Open Frimware.
hold down "command o+f" on startup i dont know if this works for osx or not but its worth a try..
if it does work type
boot cd
or boot cd\\cdname
i forget wich

aethier

 

easy fix

I have had this happen. What you need to do is... Boot into os 9 during restart. Then when you get to the os 9 desktop, go to the control panel and select your start up disc to be OS X. It sounds like it may be confused as to what startup disc you want. Have you been using os 9 a lot? It is no big emergency. Don't panic.