Panther 10.3 killed my iMac DV?! Urgent help needed.

[SylverBullet]

done that, no result - no display

 

[mark_burnt]

It's true....OS X 10.3 killed my Powerbook G4.

Totally firmwared up, went for a clean install with format to OS extended.

Install froze part way through, now won't boot (flashing ?) won't boot off cd, won't let me install system again, done all the : remove ram, airport, reset-all, nvram, pram, little power button.

So now have to take it to an apple dealer to fix, this is turning out to be an expensive operating system!!! A bit mad actually that it is going to cost 'me' money to sort out!

Can't take it in until monday so anybody have any bright ideas between now and then, I would love to hear them.

 

[DarkNovaMatter]

Well I don't know if you have tried it yet, but have you inserted the cd- then shut down (aka no power supplied to imac), then boot up normally with holding the option button? If you can do that open firmware will act like a startup disk manager. I did this when my cube was being upgraded, and OS9 was messing up my whole disk (ati driver manager, also had X partitions). Also most slot loading drives eject when the boot screen comes up- I use this to not have to play games of when to insert the cd at the right time.

If you installed an open firmware password then it will come up with a screen with a lock and line that you can type your password into- if not it will simply be all disks showing up and then you simply pick one and click the right pointing arrow to continue. Hopefully this helps you!

 

[mark_burnt]

Thanks for that, I will try that again, however I did try that on the phone with mac support and no drives appeared, just a curly arrow and a straight arrow.

This is on a Powerbook G4 aswell.

Is there anyway to format the hard drive from the firmware login prompt, y'know the place where you type set-defaults, etc???

Yours in needy help.

Mark

 

[mark_burnt]

Ok anybody who is reading this thread.

I have semi found a solution.

The issue was that the install disk one was only appearing once every 10 or so trys. When it did launch I was trying to make a clean installation and format the hard drive at the same time.

So early this morning I tried a minimal installation without formatting the hard disk. And it worked!!!

I now have the system on my machine, which is a start. Exactly how much I trust it, that's a different matter.

What is the best course of action now to do a full low level format of the hard drive to make it totally spangly clean, empty, new then reinstall. Or do you think I even have to do this, now that the machine boots, runs and appears on the face of things to work.

BTW, I'm writing this using it!