STILL can't install OS X |
December, 04, 2002 7:40 PM |
mknagata |
I spent about 5 hours last night futiley trying to install 10.2. I've posted my problems before... and can't really report much progress... but I do know a lot more about my problem. System: PMAC 7600, XLR8 Carrier card, OWC 450 mhz G4 ZIF, 256 megs RAM, 20 GIG Hard Drive, ATI Radeon Mac, Skyline Farallon PCI wireless adapter, MacAlly USB/Firewire PCI card, Mac OS 9.2.2 Hooked my monitor to the built-in video (I've heard about the kernel panic problems with using my ATI PCI card). Booted into 9.2.2. Put my OS 10.2.2 into the CD drive. Started XPostFacto 2.2.4. Same problem. Application starts, but I get no dialogue box or window that offers me the opportunity to select either the install disk or the destination drive. Changed monitor settings from 640x480 to 800x600 to 1024x768 and back again. Couldn't find a window. Tried 256 colors, tried thousands of colors, tried millions of colors. Then, I tried activating each of the menu controls under XPostFacto one at a time. About 2 hours into my experiment, I did SOMETHING (for the life of me I can't replicate it now) that caused the install window to appear. "Eureka!", I thought. But my problems had only started. I selected my install disk, and I selected my internal HD as the destination drive. I crossed my fingers and proceeded with the install. The hard drive ground away for a few seconds, and my Mac auto-rebooted. I was very optimistic so far. But then, weird things started happening. Instead of booting into anything I was expecting, I got a black screen with a WHOLE BOATLOAD of what looked a lot like old MS-DOS commands started scrolling up my screen. I tried to keep up with them, but there were too many. And a lot of them said bad things about my system... "can't find something-or- other"... "something-or-other not compatible with something-or-other" and on and on. Finally, after about 5 minutes, it stopped at a long statement that said something like "you're in the single user mode, and you're not going any farther until you pick a target disk, and here's a really long convoluted example of how you'd pick a floppy disk as a target... yadda...yadda...yadda..." It stopped at something that I normally would call a "DOS prompt" if this were DOS... but it was a different command with the old solid prompt square right after it. I waited and waited... nothing happened. So I forced a reboot. To my horror, my computer then proceeded to redo the same "black screen with white letters that looks like DOS" routine over and over and over... no matter how many times I rebooted. I was now desperately afraid that I'd never get back to OS 9!!! Finally, after about 30 restarts, I got back to OS 9, and the weird behavior seems to have disappeared (at least I'm not getting a DOS screen anymore). I am now officially gunshy of this whole process. I have spent almost 3 weeks trying to make this work, but last night's experience just about did me in. But I do very much want to get OS X onto my trusty ol' 7600. Anybody got a clue what I'm doing wrong? Mike |
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RE: STILL can't install OS X |
December, 10, 2002 9:16 PM |
OSXGuru |
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I'm glad you got it working. If you have any idea exactly which control panel was causing XPostFacto to misbehave, let me know--I might be able to fix it. |
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RE: STILL can't install OS X |
December, 09, 2002 11:25 PM |
mknagata |
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Success!!!!! I finally tried (an obvious) permutation that worked. I use Conflict Catcher to reduce my extensions set to the "9.2.2 Base" installation... just bare bones OS 9.2.2. Well... after weeks of frustration, it all worked like a charm. I now have 10.2.2 installed. Woohooo!!!! My thanks to all who suggested workarounds and generally encouraged me to keep trying! |
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I've an almost identical set up |
December, 06, 2002 1:01 PM |
naturist |
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and installation proceeded fine for me with an earlier version of XPostFacto and OS X 1.1. When I recently used XPostFacto 2.2.4 to install OS 10.2 on another HD, it went flawlessly. I'm not sure what is causing your problem, but I can say that it is supposed to work, and did for me. I know, Big Help. I do note that running other software at the time of the launch of XPostFacto can effect the process. I highly recommend turning everything else off, especially ramdisks and background software. One other thing I'd suggest is making sure your HD is clean and error-free, by running at least Disk First Aid and either Norton or Disk Warrior before trying to install 10.2. And it wouldn't hurt at all to defrag the disk first, too. Finally, no need to panic and reboot 30 times to get back to OS 9. I have always found that merely holding down the option key ALWAYS forces the boot to go to the OS 9 system folder. |
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RE: STILL can't install OS X |
December, 05, 2002 10:21 PM |
avit |
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Mike, For the love of life, please don't stoop to calling it DOS! (But that's a story for another day. Let's get to fixing your problem.) XPostFacto provides you many debugging options that will leave you to your own devices in a low-level system state where you can run commands to customize your configuration. I suspect that you've enabled some such option in your window-finding clicking frenzy. You should set all the checkboxes to the way they were (I think all off) and try again. I'm pretty sure you had Single-User mode enabled. FYI, single user mode is a state that the computer boots into, where nothing is loaded--sort of like an extreme "shift key/extensions off" mode. At the command prompt you operate as the system superuser "root" and can perform system level fix-ups that you might not otherwise be able to do after the computer has fully booted. Things like erasing your hard drive are possible here with the right command... If you find yourself at a Unix prompt which looks like this: [localhost:/] root% _ try typing exit, and the system should continue booting. (It might not, depending on some of the boot options you've selected in xPostFacto.) One of the options you can leave enabled is "verbose mode" which is the diagnostic text that you saw. Until you have your system working nicely, it's a good idea to keep it on so that you can see where things are causing you trouble. A gray Apple screen sure is pretty, but it doesn't give much information. You will see some things in verbose mode that say "can't find..." but many of these are normal. They have to do with device drivers (extensions) that are installed for multiple configurations, and only the correct one for your machine will be loaded. Don't be afraid that you've toasted your Mac if you can't get it to boot back to OS9 right away. Your NVRAM has been set to boot using OSX, and if you can't get into the Startup Disk control panel to change that, then that's what it'll keep doing when you punch it. The advice that jimlinke posted is good, and I think all of that is written in the Readme file included with XPF. I don't think, however, that you need to reformat anything. It's hardly installed a thing yet. If you want to, you can "reinstall extensions" in XPF, but I think that's about all. Persevere! I think you'll get it nailed on the next try. Andrew |
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RE: STILL can't install OS X |
December, 04, 2002 8:33 PM |
jimlinke |
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Mike, I am a bit further along than you with my PowerCenter Pro. I can go all the way through the boot process only to freeze at the first window of the setup assistant. To boot back into OS9 try holding down the option key until the happy mac icon appears, This may take awhile. If that doesn't work, zap the PRAM (hold down cmd + option + P + R after the first startup chime; continue holding them down for 3 - 4 chimes). I would remove all your PCI cards, confirm that all your SCSI devices are properly terminated and with separate ID numbers (don't assume that because it worked in OS9 that they must be right. They might not have been set right at the factory or repair shop.) Your hard drive must be formatted with either Apple's Drive Setup or Intech Hard Disk Speed Tools. I created an 8GB partition at the beginning of my hard disk for Mac OSX and install it there. I believe this is important. I would wipe your old X install and start over fresh. No doubt others on this forum can give better advice, but this is what I got. Good Luck. |
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