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titaniumdecoy

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 13, 2005
86
0
I used a retail OS X 10.5 DVD to "erase and install" OS X on my PPC G4. It had been running OS X 10.5 without problems before but I wanted to erase everything on it. (In fact, I believe I upgraded it 10.5 with the same DVD). However, the mac crashed about 80% of the way through the process. It displays an alternating sad mac and question mark when I boot it up. I am occasionally able to boot it up from the CD but there is always a kernel panic before I can click the install button. What should I do? Thanks.
 
Flashing question mark is typically indicative of a hard drive failure. Kernel panics 95% of the time are also symptoms of a hardware issue. You could try installing Mac OS X via Target Disk Mode, which will treat the G4 like an external drive, but its a bit of a longshot.
 
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