My brother has a dual-processor G4 running OS 10.2.6. Recentlu, he go
the flashing question mark while trying to boot in both os 9 and os X.

He then tried to boot off the OS X install disk, which it did, but
neither the disk utility not the installer recognizes the Mac volume,
but it does recognize the physical hard-drive. After a call to tech
support, they suggested it was a software problem and he would need to
reformat.

Naturally, he wishes to avoid this and we are wondering if anyone has
experienced this problem, and knows *exactly* which of the disk
utilities programs like Norton, Disk Warrior or whatever could
*definitely* be used to fix the problem, or if there is a specific way
to address the problem without a reformat.

Thanks,

Sean C


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Sean C <redhawk@hvc.rr.com> writes:
>
> My brother has a dual-processor G4 running OS 10.2.6. Recentlu, he
> go the flashing question mark while trying to boot in both os 9 and
> os X.
>
> He then tried to boot off the OS X install disk, which it did, but
> neither the disk utility not the installer recognizes the Mac
> volume, but it does recognize the physical hard-drive. After a call
> to tech support, they suggested it was a software problem and he
> would need to reformat.
>
> Naturally, he wishes to avoid this and we are wondering if anyone
> has experienced this problem, and knows *exactly* which of the disk
> utilities programs like Norton, Disk Warrior or whatever could
> *definitely* be used to fix the problem, or if there is a specific
> way to address the problem without a reformat.

What happens when you run the "repair" feature in Disk Utility (from
the OS X install disk)? Does it find/repair anything?

If you bought your Mac with AppleCare, it should have shipped with
"Tech Tool Deluke", which is a stripped-down version of Tech Tool
Pro. This might also help.

Try Disk Warrior. It only fixes directory problems, but it does this
very well, and that solves a wide variety of symptoms.

Since your machine can boot OS 9, you can also use Tech Tool Pro
version 3. Version 4 is an OS X progam, but I still can't seem to
find it in any stores. (It is available from Micromat's web site).

The latest version of Norton will also work. But make sure you use a
version that's designed to work with OS X. Older versions have been
known to mess up OS X, even though they will work fine on OS 9
systems.

As for which of these will *definitely* fix the problem, nobody here
will be able to answer that. The symptoms reported could becaused by
any number of things. Some of them can be fixed by a disk repair
utility, some require reformatting, and some require drive
replacement. Without actually running some repair utilities, you
have no way of knowing what kind of problem you're facing here.

-- David

In article <090220041757203421%redhawk@hvc.rr.com>,
Sean C <redhawk@hvc.rr.com> wrote:

> My brother has a dual-processor G4 running OS 10.2.6. Recentlu, he go
> the flashing question mark while trying to boot in both os 9 and os X.
>
> He then tried to boot off the OS X install disk, which it did, but
> neither the disk utility not the installer recognizes the Mac volume,
> but it does recognize the physical hard-drive. After a call to tech
> support, they suggested it was a software problem and he would need to
> reformat.
>
> Naturally, he wishes to avoid this and we are wondering if anyone has
> experienced this problem, and knows *exactly* which of the disk
> utilities programs like Norton, Disk Warrior or whatever could
> *definitely* be used to fix the problem, or if there is a specific way
> to address the problem without a reformat.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Sean C
>

Sean,

If you have access to TechTool 4 it might help. I've been seeing this
flashing system gremlin on a few machines running 10.2.6 or 10.2.8
lately. I don't know where it's coming from. What I find is that I run
some repair utility, reboot, can't find the system folder, try to boot
from a CD, find I can't boot from a CD and the machine boots back into
the original system, blah, blah, blah world of tangled string and
kittens.

See if you can boot from ANYTHING and rewrite the drivers on the ghost
drive using a drive setup utility. If that doesn't work try blessing the
OS 9 system folder if you can get to the drive. But my only success in
this confusing world lf flashing questions is to try as many different
repair utilities as I can find in the drawer and boot from a variety of
volumes to try either doing a simple driver replacement or old-fashioned
system blessing.

You can never have too many repair utilities.

Best,

John

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