I was organizing my Apple Menu items, and my system froze. I held the power button to force a power down, then powered back up, and Disk First Aid automatically started running because the computer wasn't properly shut down. After a few seconds I got this message: "ERROR: Disk First Aid is unable to read the startup Disk. For help, search for Disk First Aid in Mac OS Help." I selected OK and the machine booted up with no apparent problems. When I tried to open the Help Center, the system froze again, and was unresponsive to a Force Quit. What are the troubleshooting steps for Mac, I'm unfamiliar. Thanks. (Oh, the reason for the ? in the OS field is because I have OS X, but I'm running in classic mode on 9.2.2.)

Boot from the CD that came with the Mac and run Disk First Aid. p

My mac came with many CDs. I booted from the Apple Care CD, ran Disk First Aid (Verify if I remember), and after about 10 seconds it returned the message, "cannot read startup disk - cannot repair" or something similar and equally frustrating, can't remember the exact wording, but I noticed that if I try to boot with OSX as the startup disk, I get the folder with the question mark, but if I boot with OS9 as the startup disk, everything seems to work fine. Should I reinstall OSX? I'm scared. I'm going to call Apple, too, but I work long hours and I forget. Thanks.

Get a copy of DiskWarrior from www.alsoft.com. p

BAH! I was afraid you were going to post that. $70, hmm. I'm going to rent the Money Pit tonight for support. mac gets a big thumbs down. (don't you deserve part of the thumbs down?) nope, mac needs to be better. where's the rewind button on life, let me know, I want to do like apple says and make the switch, back to windows, though. "Macs are friendly to technically-challenged people like me" - haha - I laugh. Maniacally.