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here's a challenge for you. os 9.

D

DylTaco

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 28, 2007
3
0
i have an old iMac that i keep some music and pictures on. one day i was converting a movie to another format, and somehow saved every frame of the movie as a picture. on the desktop, no less.

yeah. good move.

so when the computer tries to start up, it starts loading all these pictures. it can get to somewhere around the 21,000th one when it says the finder has no more memory and must restart.

i'd like to be able to fix this problem, somehow delete those files and be able to save what data i have on the computer, but i've kind of given up on that idea.

i tried to boot from the install cd to start fresh, and it still tries loading all the pictures.

any ideas?
 
Have you tried booting from an external hard drive? That would load the desktop from the OS on the external HD instead of the internal, thus not loading all those frames. You can then access the other desktop (in list mode, it'll take a while) and delete/organize the thousands of frames.
 
it does, but i don't have another mac nor do i know anyone who does and could bring it over.

i also don't have an external hard drive, but there is a possibility that i know someone who'd let me use theirs.

are there any other possible solutions?
 
dllavaneras said:
Have you tried booting from an external hard drive? That would load the desktop from the OS on the external HD instead of the internal, thus not loading all those frames. You can then access the other desktop (in list mode, it'll take a while) and delete/organize the thousands of frames.
Click to expand...

No, OS9 automatically loads the Desktop folder of every drive that is mounted.
Even list mode will crash the machine if it has more than (IIRC) 4000 or so entries. The OP has to find a way to access the files on the hard drive to delete the Desktop files, without displaying them in the Finder.

I would say, pull the drive from the machine, put it in a Firewire case, and hook it up to a Mac running OSX

You're gonna need some external assistance here, unless someone can come up with a fancy way of booting the machine whilst supressing the Desktop in the Finder.
 
i see.

so there's not even a way to just wipe the system? not even in open firmware?

thanks very much for your help, by the way.
 
No open firmware isn't like a DOS/UNIX thing where you boot to it and have free access to the HD. Its software that runs the hardware (kinda like booting to the BIOS screen on a PC).

You'll need some kind of external source like everyone else said. I was going to have you boot from an OS 9 CD but it will load the desktop just like it does off the HD. You can try that if you want, but I don't think it will help you.
 
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