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metalgearmac

macrumors member
Original poster
My brothers computer is messed up. When you start it up the apple logo appears and the spinning thing rotates likes normal. But when that is all done a black screen appears and some text appears like this.
-sh: /etc/profile: is a directory
-sh-2.05b#

Can anyone please help I have no idea whats up . And there is a disk in the slot
 
Can you get the disk out? If it still doesn't start properly with the disk removed, then try starting up from the OSX disks and tell us how far you get. 🙂
 
If the disk won't come out; restart while holding the mouse button down - keep holding until the disk comes out.
 
EricNau said:
If the disk won't come out; restart while holding the mouse button down - keep holding until the disk comes out.

Indeed or try holding the eject button whiles restarting.


Bless
 
metalgearmac said:
My brothers computer is messed up. When you start it up the apple logo appears and the spinning thing rotates likes normal. But when that is all done a black screen appears and some text appears like this.
-sh: /etc/profile: is a directory
-sh-2.05b#

/etc/profile should not be a directory so perhaps that could be causing a problem? At that shell prompt (sh-2.05b#) you are able to type correct? If so you could check to see that your System wide profile (/etc/profile) is there and was not perhaps overwritten by a directory by chance and is messing up the boot process.
 
I've successfully removed the one disk and now have the os x disk in their. I started it up and a window pops up with the title Install Mac OS X. But then a alert pops up informing me that this software cannot be installed on this computer. Any other suggestion would be appreciated.
 
Yeah, use his PowerBook disks. However, before you do that, I recommend trying to use Target Disk Mode to back up all the information on the PowerBook. Then, I'd try reinstalling the OS. 🙂
 
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