Salim borrowed my old PowerBook Lombard the other day, and when he returned it, he brought over an identical Lombard. Both laptops would not boot up, however, giving me identical error messages. Following the initial gray Apple logo, a circle with a slash appeared. I tried restarting multiple times, resetting the PRAM, and opening the CD-ROM tray to no avail.
After spending a few hours banging my head over the problem, I held down the ‘C’ key at startup. This forces the computer to boot from a CD. It also unlocks the ability to open the CD-ROM tray. I was then able to restart using the Panther Install CD, run Disk Utility, and set the hard drive as the new startup volume. Though Disk Utility did not find any errors on the hard drive, the computer now starts up and restarts properly.
Initially, my Lombard was running Mac OS 9. I had installed Mac OS X for Salim, who was running some browser compatibility tests. OS 9 on a G3 is snappy! OS X, on the other hand, feels so sluggish. My G4-powered computers have regained some of the snap, but at times the interface still feels a little slow. Perhaps the new G5 that I ordered will make me feel like it’s 1999 all over again!
tow.com 