Powermac G4 not booting up...

[princealfie]

I was installing Tiger using FireWire from my Powermac G4 and it was nearly done when my Powerbook (target) died due to lack of battery... When the Powermac was rebooted, I get only a question mark and flashing smile...

I tried to test the C and T keys holding them down during boot up but only get the smiley face every single time... I even disconnected the secondary drive to no avail!

What happened?

 

[sash]

What happened?

Hi,

your system has not been installed. This question mark means that the machine can not find a system to start up.

sash

EDITED: Sorry, it looks like I've missed the point completely: you can not start your PowerMac? Try to run fsck or DiskWarrior (from CD).

 

[velocityg4]

Try holding down the option key while booting the Powermac to see if your HD shows up. Otherwise try booting from the Install disc and use Disk Utility to see if you PMacs HD is listed and running right. You could also go into Terminal from the Install CD and run FDISK to flag the your Mac OS partition as active.

I think the command is (assuming only one HD and partition otherwise get the correct drive and partition from disk utility)
fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0 (you may need to put "sudo" first)
flag 1
write
update
exit (Edit: actually I think you type "quit" as I recall 'exit' will leave without writing the entry while 'quit' finalizes the entry)

 

[princealfie]

hey there,

I can start the powermac and I get the chime which means that it's all good but then it goes grey and then the question mark flashes...

I will check it after I get home and relay what I find of course...

thanks so much.

Hi,

your system has not been installed. This question mark means that the machine can not find a system to start up.

sash

EDITED: Sorry, it looks like I've missed the point completely: you can not start your PowerMac? Try to run fsck or DiskWarrior (from CD).