Can't open system prefs in Panther

[wordmunger]

My brother has an old powerbook G4 that's been upgraded to Panther, but only came with the Mac OS 9 install disk. For some reason, the system prefs won't open -- but since he doesn't have the Panther disk, he can't boot from the startup disk to try and fix it. He is completely broke, so buying Tiger isn't an option.

Any ideas as to how he can access sys prefs again?

 

[belvdr]

Did you try repairing permissions? You might also look at /var/log/system.log to see if it threw any errors.

 

[wordmunger]

Did you try repairing permissions? You might also look at /var/log/system.log to see if it threw any errors.

I'm not much of a unixhead -- I can see the file in Terminal, but how do I read it?

edit: yes, I did repair permissions

 

[California]

Has he done all the lastest software updates for Panther?

 

[wordmunger]

Has he done all the lastest software updates for Panther?

No, hasn't tried that. He's got a very slow dial-up connection, so that would take an awful long time. That may be the next thing we try.

 

[belvdr]

I'm not much of a unixhead -- I can see the file in Terminal, but how do I read it?

edit: yes, I did repair permissions

Here's what to do. Go into Terminal and type:

tail -f /var/log/system.log

This will grab the bottom of the file (tail) and update it in realtime (-f). So you are essentially watching the log.

Now fire up System Preferences and see if anything is logged.

You can also check the other logs like console.log.