I have a Mac G4 Server that has serious boot problems. Nothing I do works. Mac OS 9: * won't boot off the retail Mac OS 9.1 CD -- displays mouse pointer, then freezes. * ditto on hard drives, whether freshly formatted and installed, or a Mac OS 9 folder on the Mac OS X drive set as the startup volume. Mac OS X: After I tried a fresh Mac OS 9.1 install on one of my reformatted drives and updated it as well as the 9.1 folder on the X drive with 9.2.1, Mac OS X stopped booting. The boot screen doesn't even show the X volume (with Option selected to get the boot screen). The disk utility on the OS X install CD (which does boot) sees the drive that had Mac OS X installed. But it can't install to either drive (they don't show up in the install list), nor can it reformat the drives (says it can't unmount). I'm guessing some process has somehow locked both drives and isn't resetting. I don't see any way to boot into OS X off the OS X install CD like you could in previous Mac OSs to be able to even access the drive. I'm totally flabbergasted -- any ideas? So much for a reliable OS from Apple.

I have had this problem with booting from the OS 9.1 CD but it turned out to be a scratch on the CD. Polished the scratch out and it works now. 9.1 Install CD or System Restore CD? The System restore CD comes with 3 options Restore in Place, Erase and keep a copy. The names are not correct but I hope you will get the idea. two of these option would make the OS X stop booting or disappear. The Restore in place feature should work and not harm OS X. The suggestion here would be to try again to boot from the OS 9 CD holding the C button during boot. (check the CD for scratches and fingerprints) If you succeed then Choose the ERASE option during the restore. This should set you up in 9. Once 9 is setup install the 9.2 update. Now boot from the OSX CD 10.2 holding the C during boot. (If you have earlier version then let us know as this changes things slightly) Install the 10.2 but do not choose the erase option.

I checked the CD -- there's no scratch. As I mentioned, the same thing happens with a drive formatted with Mac OS 9.1 and then updated to 9.2.1, as well as when I boot off 9.2.1 on the Mac OS X partition (done as you described). I dount it's the CD given that any OS 9 medium refuses to boot and instead freezes the system before even the Mac icon appears. Does anyone know whether Apple prohibited OS 9 from working onthe G4/400 Server (Sawtooth)?? I had not heard of that, and all the Apple docs indicate it should work. At least I got Mac OS X installer to finally see the drive OS X was on -- it somehow unlocked. I had to "upgrade" the drive from 10.2 to 10.2 (no typo) to get it to boot OS X off the hard drive, and now it's very flaky, with almost everything crashing when launched, including I and System Profiler. So I'm going to try another reformat and fresh install.

Checked the apple support page and came up with this. One other note was that it appears the CD for a machine will only work in the breed it came with. eg. iMac restore will not work in a Powerbook. While you have the friends working system folder on your system, you may want to back it up to CD as it appears you will be re-partitioning the drive. Sorry I wasn't more help. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum= 106294&SaveKCWindowURL= http%3A%2F%2Fkbase.info.apple.com%2Fcgi- bin%2FWebObjects%2Fkbase.woa%2Fwa%2FS aveKCToHomePage&searchMode=Expert& kbhost=kbase.info.apple.com&showButton= false&randomValue=100&showSurvey=false& sessionID=anonymous|154362028

Turns out it was the SCSI card -- the Atto UL2D that came with the Mac seems to have flaked out. When I remove it, everything works normally -- CDs boot in 9 and X, IDE hard drive boots in 9 and X. I put in an Atto PSC card and it works fine as well, except I can't boot off of it for some reason.

Thanks for the feedback. Someone will benefit from your discovery. That is what this is all about.