My mum recently purchased a new printer (epson stylus DX7400) for her G4. This was about a week ago.
Today it crashed (mouse lost, force quit not appearing) without the "~You need to restart your computer now..." message. I held down the power button and then restarted it. The apple loaded but the spinner didn't. After about 20 minutes I restarted it again and the spinner did load but the computer didn't finish loading. So I restarted it again and got the missing folder image. Upon more restarts I either got the missing folder image or the prohibited sign.
I have tried stuff on the support section of apple's website including booting in safe mode and resetting VRAM/PRAM, but nothing changed.
I guess that the printer has something to do with it (drivers?)(I have tried booting with everything not needed disconnected). The only solution left seems to be to reinstall Mac OS, but my mum hasn't got the install CDs (computer was bought second hand). Is there a way to fix it, keeping all the data like photos on the hard drive? Or does it need reinstalling? I have a mac mini G4 running tiger right next to the faulty computer if that helps.
Edit: When I put my Tiger install disks that came with my computer in my mum's G4 and I run disk Utility it is not displaying the internal hard drive. On the startup system menu it does not show the 10.2.8 folder. When using terminal the only root level files it finds are Library, .forward and .nsmbrc. Does that help in explaining what is wrong?
Today it crashed (mouse lost, force quit not appearing) without the "~You need to restart your computer now..." message. I held down the power button and then restarted it. The apple loaded but the spinner didn't. After about 20 minutes I restarted it again and the spinner did load but the computer didn't finish loading. So I restarted it again and got the missing folder image. Upon more restarts I either got the missing folder image or the prohibited sign.
I have tried stuff on the support section of apple's website including booting in safe mode and resetting VRAM/PRAM, but nothing changed.
I guess that the printer has something to do with it (drivers?)(I have tried booting with everything not needed disconnected). The only solution left seems to be to reinstall Mac OS, but my mum hasn't got the install CDs (computer was bought second hand). Is there a way to fix it, keeping all the data like photos on the hard drive? Or does it need reinstalling? I have a mac mini G4 running tiger right next to the faulty computer if that helps.
Edit: When I put my Tiger install disks that came with my computer in my mum's G4 and I run disk Utility it is not displaying the internal hard drive. On the startup system menu it does not show the 10.2.8 folder. When using terminal the only root level files it finds are Library, .forward and .nsmbrc. Does that help in explaining what is wrong?