HELP Panther boot

[Biker21098]

WOW, so I have major issues. I was playing BF1942 when it all of a sudden locked up. hard lock up whole system froze. I pressed teh hard reset button and rebooted. On boot the little black circle thing froze and the computer just hung there. Finall after using safe boot (shift key) while booting i got it to finally boot. I realy cant seem to find the issue as to why its hanging up on boot. I booted into verbose mode, (apple v) which tells me lots of things. most things load, kinda just like a linux boot listing, it all seems okay. At the bottom it says this though and refuses to boot.

"/etc/rc: line 282: 157 Hangup SystemStarter -gr ${VerboseFlag} ${SafeBoot}"

Now the hangup number has also been 154 164 and 165 frm my memory. but its always line 282. I recently installed a WACOM tablet, but i doubt that would cause issues. Safe mode boots fine, so it seems, just dont have like any features. no sound, or open gl, or a lot of drivers etc, which is what safemode does no surprise there. I also recently istalled ident2 for IRC, but that seems to load and not be an issue. I'm at a loss here, I do have a backup, but for somereason it refuses to boot from it, i guess i could make another backup from safemode, not sure how smart that would be, to reformat my backup drive and start from scratch.
Now some details bout the system.
G4 sawtooth originally 450 MHz now powerlogix Dual 1.2GHz (has always run fine)
one busted USB port (just fried bout a month ago)
Radeon 8500 ( was being overclocked by ATIcellerator 1.04)
5 internal HDDs (two on main bus, system drive is one of them)
all the drives mount fine
1 gig of old school PC100 RAM
I do run dual monitors if that may be an issue, i doubt it
please ask if u need anymore info I am running 10.3.5 with latest security update, this issue happened beofore the latest security update i just did the security update under safemode, didnt fix my problem.

also one last thing i notice in verbose says"AppleRS232Serial::start - returning false early, connector of machine incorrect"

(a few startup items, but ive taken out the ones i think arent needed. NUM check thing is in there, and VPC, and a few others, been one at a time removing them to see if it fixes it, they all seem to load in verbose mode though, so i wasnt thinking that those are it)

Thanks for the help, im thinking its just some hangup issue, shoudl eb fixable, really trying not to ahve to reformat.

Ran tech tool pro
found file allocation problem, ran recovery fix it thingy that it told me to do, i know not the smartest thing. went trhough sectors, then froze while trying to get more got through one set, then anaylized it, then 2nd set ent REALLY SLOW, but it got through, on 3rd set it froze, this is from the boot CD.

Okay thats about it, thanks I'm at school and kinda need a computer that can print and do my video editing etc. Laptop is tiding me over for now. I really appreciate all of your guys and gals knowledge.
-CJ

 

[wrldwzrd89]

WOW, so I have major issues. I was playing BF1942 when it all of a sudden locked up. hard lock up whole system froze. I pressed teh hard reset button and rebooted. On boot the little black circle thing froze and the computer just hung there. Finall after using safe boot (shift key) while booting i got it to finally boot. I realy cant seem to find the issue as to why its hanging up on boot. I booted into verbose mode, (apple v) which tells me lots of things. most things load, kinda just like a linux boot listing, it all seems okay. At the bottom it says this though and refuses to boot.

"/etc/rc: line 282: 157 Hangup SystemStarter -gr ${VerboseFlag} ${SafeBoot}"

Now the hangup number has also been 154 164 and 165 frm my memory. but its always line 282. I recently installed a WACOM tablet, but i doubt that would cause issues. Safe mode boots fine, so it seems, just dont have like any features. no sound, or open gl, or a lot of drivers etc, which is what safemode does no surprise there. I also recently istalled ident2 for IRC, but that seems to load and not be an issue. I'm at a loss here, I do have a backup, but for somereason it refuses to boot from it, i guess i could make another backup from safemode, not sure how smart that would be, to reformat my backup drive and start from scratch.
Now some details bout the system.
G4 sawtooth originally 450 MHz now powerlogix Dual 1.2GHz (has always run fine)
one busted USB port (just fried bout a month ago)
Radeon 8500 ( was being overclocked by ATIcellerator 1.04)
5 internal HDDs (two on main bus, system drive is one of them)
all the drives mount fine
1 gig of old school PC100 RAM
I do run dual monitors if that may be an issue, i doubt it
please ask if u need anymore info I am running 10.3.5 with latest security update, this issue happened beofore the latest security update i just did the security update under safemode, didnt fix my problem.

also one last thing i notice in verbose says"AppleRS232Serial::start - returning false early, connector of machine incorrect"

(a few startup items, but ive taken out the ones i think arent needed. NUM check thing is in there, and VPC, and a few others, been one at a time removing them to see if it fixes it, they all seem to load in verbose mode though, so i wasnt thinking that those are it)

Thanks for the help, im thinking its just some hangup issue, shoudl eb fixable, really trying not to ahve to reformat.

Ran tech tool pro
found file allocation problem, ran recovery fix it thingy that it told me to do, i know not the smartest thing. went trhough sectors, then froze while trying to get more got through one set, then anaylized it, then 2nd set ent REALLY SLOW, but it got through, on 3rd set it froze, this is from the boot CD.

Okay thats about it, thanks I'm at school and kinda need a computer that can print and do my video editing etc. Laptop is tiding me over for now. I really appreciate all of your guys and gals knowledge.
-CJ

I think your filesystem got messed up somehow. Can you boot from the Mac OS X install CD? If you can, try running Disk Utility (choose Open Disk Utility from the Install menu when prompted to choose a language) and repairing your disk. If that doesn't work, your best bet is to use a wonderful drive recovery program called DiskWarrior (by Alsoft) to get any data you might need, then reformat the drive and get your system running again. If that fails (due to bad blocks on the hard drive, for example), you'll need to replace the HDD.

 

[Biker21098]

HELP Panther boot

Ran disk repain, nothing to repair, checked out okay, same exact thing it said under single user boot. Might go buy DiskWarrior, in teh meantime going to boot into safemode and CCC to another drive. The only reason i think its not the HDD is that safemode works fine, and it checks oout okay. So I really just want to fix that one little file that is bugging panther on normal boot. Thanks for your help, any more suggestions, i've been checking out command line stuff, i think its just my etc/rc directory that is messed up, so maybe i can get a new one. and copy it all in.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Ran disk repain, nothing to repair, checked out okay, same exact thing it said under single user boot. Might go buy DiskWarrior, in teh meantime going to boot into safemode and CCC to another drive. The only reason i think its not the HDD is that safemode works fine, and it checks oout okay. So I really just want to fix that one little file that is bugging panther on normal boot. Thanks for your help, any more suggestions, i've been checking out command line stuff, i think its just my etc/rc directory that is messed up, so maybe i can get a new one. and copy it all in.

If your HDD is not at fault, then don't bother buying DiskWarrior, since it won't help you (unless you want it anyway just in case). It sounds like something's corrupted that loads during the boot process - maybe a driver (in the form of a .kext)?

 

[Biker21098]

update

so ive been spending hours on this thing. here is teh latest. I cleaned off a pocket 80GB drive, little 2.5 inch drive bus powered for laptops. I CCC my system drive to it, using safe mode. Then I booted from the Panther Install disks and did a archive install and copied user info etc over. Booted fine off teh pocket drive. Then ran system update 1st round, booted no problems. COntinued system update with QT and pro app update and the 3 security updates. On reboot it looked liek all was fine, but then affter the grey apple logo and spinning thing for about 20 sec, it went t the circle with a line through it. So i had a prfectly good wroking booting drive, then the update messed it up, now that odd. any ideas? maybe has to do with my processor upgrade? im getting all mixed up cause im not exactly sure whats wrong, and that has me worried. At point a clean reinstall im not sure would even fix the problem, or if it did, as soon as i installed some driver or soemthing it'd happen all over again. NOT GOOD. thanks again fro the ideas keep them coming.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

so ive been spending hours on this thing. here is teh latest. I cleaned off a pocket 80GB drive, little 2.5 inch drive bus powered for laptops. I CCC my system drive to it, using safe mode. Then I booted from the Panther Install disks and did a archive install and copied user info etc over. Booted fine off teh pocket drive. Then ran system update 1st round, booted no problems. COntinued system update with QT and pro app update and the 3 security updates. On reboot it looked liek all was fine, but then affter the grey apple logo and spinning thing for about 20 sec, it went t the circle with a line through it. So i had a prfectly good wroking booting drive, then the update messed it up, now that odd. any ideas? maybe has to do with my processor upgrade? im getting all mixed up cause im not exactly sure whats wrong, and that has me worried. At point a clean reinstall im not sure would even fix the problem, or if it did, as soon as i installed some driver or soemthing it'd happen all over again. NOT GOOD. thanks again fro the ideas keep them coming.

Hmm... Is it possible that your processor upgrade card needs something special to talk to the OS, and it can't be found? Another possibility is that the file it needs is there, but was changed with the update and is now incompatible with your processor upgrade.

 

[Biker21098]

last update

Well allis okay now. I used another HDD to clone the broken drive to, then do an archive install. First try it wouldn't boot, but then i repaired permissions, SOO many were messed up Then booted fine from the temp drive. I then zeroed all the data on a 120 gig drive i used as backup, and cloned the new working copy onto that drive. Most stuff was easy to get working again, had to install all the pref panes again, and fonts, and some other minor things, but pretty painless considering this is a 2 yr old install that just keeps getting updated and I have tons of 3rd party apps and lots of apple's pro apps fro video. So all is well, I now have the 120 gig drive as my boot drive. I'll do some serious test on the 80 to see if I can still use it. Thanks for your help. I know there must have been an easier way, but some good came out of this, I learned a ton about booting and safe boot and single and verbose and backup properly so its a bootable version etc. Thanks a ton!

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Well allis okay now. I used another HDD to clone the broken drive to, then do an archive install. First try it wouldn't boot, but then i repaired permissions, SOO many were messed up Then booted fine from the temp drive. I then zeroed all the data on a 120 gig drive i used as backup, and cloned the new working copy onto that drive. Most stuff was easy to get working again, had to install all the pref panes again, and fonts, and some other minor things, but pretty painless considering this is a 2 yr old install that just keeps getting updated and I have tons of 3rd party apps and lots of apple's pro apps fro video. So all is well, I now have the 120 gig drive as my boot drive. I'll do some serious test on the 80 to see if I can still use it. Thanks for your help. I know there must have been an easier way, but some good came out of this, I learned a ton about booting and safe boot and single and verbose and backup properly so its a bootable version etc. Thanks a ton!

I've been quite the helper on these forums - I've helped out many before you, and I'd be glad to attempt to help you again.