A possible recovery method for a dead startup disk

Nov 27, '03 11:19:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

If your PowerBook G4 ends up (like mine) booting to a folder with a question mark instead of Mac OS X, and happens that you do not have a System CD with you from which to boot and fix your startup disk, here is a trick that may bring it back to normal (it did for me). It should also work for most new Macs. Boot to Open Firmware by pressing Alt+Command+O+F on boot. At the prompt, type the following two lines:

 set-defaults                            [hit Enter]
 boot hd:,SystemLibraryCoreServicesBootX [hit Enter]
Hopefully your Mac will boot to OS X or (if the trick doesn't work) to a white screen with an error signal instead of the Apple logo. Don't panic, just switch off the box and try the commands again (it actually took three tries for mine to come back). Remember to re-set your startup disk to the Mac OS X folder in the Preferences -> Startup Disk after you get running again!

If this trick doesn't make your Mac come back, you may want to go and read this document, and additionally this info on Open Firmware by Apple. Finally, this one is a quick info page for OpenFirmware, very clear and useful.

Good luck.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031119134803664