Really sick Mac?
Here are a few things that can help you nudge it back toward the land of the living.
If your Mac won't boot
- First, try holding down the shift key at startup time until the "Extensions Disabled" message appears. (You can then let go.) If the Mac successfully boots to the Desktop, you know that the Finder and the System files are not the fundamental cause of the problem. It is likely that an extension or control panel is the cause of your startup crash.
- If you can reach the Finder's Desktop by starting, as mentioned above, with the Shift Key down, you should open up the Extensions Manager, disable unnecessary extensions and control panels and restart. Programs such as Casady & Greene's Conflict Catcher or Now's Startup Manager can ease the process of troubleshooting startup problems. If you don't have either of these tools, try using Extensions Manager to turn off half the items at a time, then restart as many times as necessary, turning on and off half the items at a time to minimize the number of restarts you'll have to perform.
If you cannot reach the Finder's Desktop
- With the power off, connect an external hard drive and restart (or insert a bootable Mac OS CD, if you have a supported Apple CD-ROM drive) and press Command+Option+Shift+Delete. This will temporarily override the system's inclination to boot from the internal drive and allow it to boot from the other drive.
Alternatively, you can press Command-option-shift-delete-then the SCSI ID of the drive you want to boot from. Unfortunately, neither of these techniques work on G3/BW Macs and iMacs, according to an Apple TIL article (#24881).
If the above procedure does not work, or is not possible
- See if a bootable floppy disk is available (again, this is of no help to G3/BW Macs and iMac owners) or any other bootable external drive. You may be able to boot the system and repair the problem by using a recent Apple Disk Tools disk or an emergency startup diskette from a third-party utility.
When you reach the Finder, install new System software. (Recent system software versions include a "Clean Install" option. To access this feature in earlier Mac OS releases, press Command-Shift-K at the "Easy Install/Custom Install" screen.)
Be sure you update devices attached to your Mac with their newest drivers. Check the web pages of the companies that make the peripherals you use for the latest driver updates and troubleshooting info.
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