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Startup Major Mess-up

Christine1234

Christine1234

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2011
168
13
Snowflake, AZ
I went to a used book store this morning and got a book on iMacs, specifically those running Panther. It talked about how to go back and forth between OS 9 and OS X, and I thought it would be fun to try. I got one of the iMacs, went to System Preferences, then clicked on OS 9 and restarted. I poked around on OS 9 for a while, then wanted to go back to OS X. The book said to go to the startup disk and select OS X. I went to the startup disk, but the only options were OS 9 and network disk. I tried network disk, but now all I get is a gray screen with a white box with a globe in the middle. How do I get out of this? I’ve tried rebooting several times with no luck. And if I ever get brave enough to try OS 9 on this machine again, how would I get back to OS 10? Help please!

Edited to add: After being unplugged for about 5 minutes, it went back to OS 9. How do I get back to OS X, please? I found it hidden under OS 9, and it keeps telling me some items are not in a folder and if I try to go back to OS X that the computer may not be able to restart.
 
Last edited:
First off let's see if we can get you out of the Network boot. Try rebooting your Mac and holding down the X key while it reboots. This should force it to boot OS X.
 
I'm back in OS X, thanks!!

Is there a safe and easy way to go between OS 9 and OS X? It's a grape iMac G3, and I also have an indigo one. Both have OS 9 and Panther installed.
 
Believe it or not I've never actually owned a dual boot Mac, I went from a G3 iMac with Mac OS 8.6 to a G4 iMac with OS X 10.2 (with Classic) but my father-in-law owns a Quicksilver G4 that can dual boot. It's been years since I've used it though so I had to go look it up, hopefully this covers everything you need to know, it not post again and I'll help you figure it out.

:apple: How to switch between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.4 or earlier
 
Christine1234 said:
Thanks, I printed that information off to keep for future reference, in case I get up the courage to try again. :)
Click to expand...

Don't be afraid. It should be just as easy as selecting the system of your choosing and rebooting, I don't know why the OS X System wasn't available as an option it should have been. The problem with the Network startup is that the Mac was looking for a startup disk that it could boot from on the Network, once it couldn't find one it fell back to one that it could find. Just don't choose the Network startup option and you should be fine. :)
 
Thanks again. In OS X it gives me the option of OS 9 or OS X. When it was in OS 9, the option for X was not there. I don't know what went wrong.
 
That's probably it! I was using OS 9.1. Many thanks for figuring that out, I copied that page off and I'll upgrade both of the iMacs before trying to use OS 9 again. :)
 
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