i`ve managed to get the flashing question mark.
The powerbook g3 will not read the installation cd as I`ve upgraded from os 9.1 to os 9.2.1.
Can anyone help ?

Unless you can find a CD you can boot from you're in trouble! Do you know anyone with a Norton Utilities CD for example?

This question mark - is it a coloured icon or a grey disk? If it's a coloured icon it means it cannot find a working system folder. If it's the grey disk then your hard drive is faulty or corrupted.

Try holding down the Option (Alt) key when you boot up - on some systems the ROM will search for system folders and give you a list to choose from.

I hope this helps.

Hi Stem,

In Effect is right. Your best bet is to get hold of a recent version of Norton's Utilities and perfrom a Disk Doctor and Speedisk check of your hard drive. Diskwarrior is also another fantastic utility which has brought back many Macs from "the dead."

The fact that you have upgraded your Mac should not mean that a genuine install CD will fail to boot your Mac. After all you are starting the Mac from the CD or are attempting to rather than the hard drive which is where the problem lies. You may have a dirty CD drive or the install CD could be faulty.

If you have no Mac owning friends with other OS 9 install CDs , I would recommend buying a CD drive cleaner, and trying your install CD again. BTW make sure it is an OS install CD rather than a restore CD. If you do get the Mac to boot from the install CD you could try using the Disk First Aid tool in the Utilities folder on most install CDs. This is a basic tool but Norton's is the way to go assumming you can get the CD to work.

Regards

David