G4 wont startup - pinwheel *Newbie help*

[smokie]

Hello....Im *very* new to Mac and in the process of swapping from this dreaded PC to the glorious world of apple! (thank goodness I still have it here to help me recover from my dilemma).

It was all working perfectly (yes its never had a problem in the 2 weeks Ive been experimenting with it!), but then I had a warning about low disk space.....I tried deleting some d/l programs etc & then emptying the trash, but thats when it hung & I had to reboot.

She's never recovered since !

Trouble is I now have the white screen with apple logo & the spinning pinwheel @ the bottom when I start it up. No start up sound or anything. I looked at the forums & managed to get the damn thing to eventually load the original OSX software CD ( 10.3 Panther) but if I go thru the process of trying to reinstall the OS it wont let me as my HDD doesnt have enough space.

Im sure the problem is with the HDD or something, but is there any way I can get into it & delete some stuff without having to format it & loose all the stuff I have transfered over?

What I have done so far:
* Hard reset with pwr off for a good 8hrs while @ work
* Pressed that button near the backup battery once.
* Removed & replaced the battery
* Removed the HDD connection to bootup
* Removed all external devices/peripherals
I have run out of options!

All I can remember is its got about 7?? something RAM, a 40Gb hDD & its a 450Mhz processor I think....but I cant get in to confirm any of that.

Id really appreciate any help offered.
Thank you

Nigel
Melbourne, Australia

 

[teapot]

Hi There and welcome,
Hvae you tried to boot in "safe" mode Holding down the shift key during start up?
try that the repair permissions usind the apple disc utility app. failing that try to start using the original cd holding the c key during start up you can then investigate the contents of your hard drive you should try to keep at least 10% free disk space for efficiency. And again repair permissions. I wish you luck and let me know how you progress
Teapot

 

[smokie]

Thanks for the advice teapot.......cant boot in safe mnode, it keeps coming up with a kernel panic screen of gobbdy-gook.

I managed to get into the CD again & open disk utility but when I tried the 'repair disk permissions thing I got this message all the time:

"Disk utility internal error'
Disk utility has lost its connection with the disk management utility tool and cannot continue. Please quit & relaunch disk utility.

Which I have done several times.

Im about 888MB short to install the OS another time, even after removing all but the 'essential system software'.

Any other ideas or have I just lost the lot & I have to reformat the drive?
:-(

Thanks
Smokie

 

[Ric]

Hi there Smokie and welcome,

can you reboot holding down the Command and s key's, this will boot you into single user mode...a bit like dos !

Then type...

cd /

then press return

Then type...

ls

then press return

then give us a list of what it finds...

There may be some stuff that you can then remove from the command line...

regards

Ric

 

[smokie]

Hi Ric;

I tried that but it just hangs there with text on the screen & I cant type anything at all.
BUT.........

What Ive decided to try (Slap me if Im going down the wrong path here folks!)
I had a spare 40g HDD from another PC Im ex-communicating. I installed that (made it master, made my OSX one slave. Now I have enough HDD space to at least install OSX and get it going. (Fingers crossed)

Can I then get into my other HDD, remove some space & make it master again; remove the 2nd install of OSX and use it as mere storage, or can I import the data/settings into the fresh install of OSX? And forget about the dodgy version?

Sorry if I sound dumb!

Cheers
Smokie

 

[Ric]

Sounds Like a plan to me !

Let us know how the install goes !

regards

Ric