Help starmx 1000 doesn't boot.......Lost PC user

[fenris]

I am a complete newbie when it comes to macs. Heck I only saw my first mac when I started working here. Anyway, this mac is going home with one of the office workers (employee purchase). It is misbehaving quite a bit. The first problem was that it didn't power up. I solved this problem by pressing the little grey reset button inside the mac. It then had other problems. When the mac would finally boot into it's desktop, it would give an error about the main drive being broken or something like that and to run disk first aid on it. I searched through all the menus for it, but I could not find it. So I brought it back to the office to take a crack at it there. Well guess what, that mac is about six years old and all the software disks that came with it haven't been seen in five years. When I went to turn the mac after downloading a copy of disk first aid from apple, it won't start, it just sits there and flashes a floppy diskette icon on the screen with a ? in it. I assume that it can't find a drive to boot from. I am at a loss, I don't know who to procede. Is there a way to get disk first aid on a floppy and boot the machine from it.<br><br>What I don't understand is why the disk repair utility is not on the machine in the first place or is that just plain PC iggnorance? For my first experience with macs, I can say that I am not a convert..... <p>Troy Williams B.Eng.<br><a href=mailto:fenris@hotmail.com>fenris@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>

 

[TheRAt]

A normal MacOS installation would have installed the disk first aid utility into the &quot;Apple Extras&quot; folder in the hard drive of the mac... I used to delete these, as I always had a boot CD with the disk first aid utility, and this saved space...<br><br>My guess with the discription is that the machine's HDD has a faulty volume bit-map (or a similar problem) and will be fixed if you can start it up using a boot floppy / cd and run the disk first aid utility on it to repair.<br><br>A lot of the non-scsi mac machines used to have a problem with hitting th reset button. (I still have a similar problem with a new G4 with a second 18 gig IDE disk)...<br><br>Hopy this was of some help<br><br>AV

 

[fenris]

Thanks for the response. I figured that the boot disk would and disk first aid would solve the problem. Unfortunately that is the problem I have no idea where the software for these computers is? They where bought in '96 and the software was kept someplace else and nobody seems to know where it is. I was wondering if there was a way to build a boot disk on a PC and use it for the mac? Otherwise I will be forced to send the machine out for repairs on what is most likely a simple fix if I could only boot the machine.<br><br><br>Thanks for the help... <p>Troy Williams B.Eng.<br><a href=mailto:fenris@hotmail.com>fenris@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>

 

[stratcat]

If you can find a MacOS 7.6 or greater bootable CD, that<br>should fix it. Just re-install the OS. These machines<br>are the most problematic of all Mac clones.<br><br>Emory

 

[fenris]

Thanks, my boss and adamant mac user finally cam back from his vacation and new where the boot disks were. I have a new problem, the mac boots from the disc now but disk first aid says it can not fix the problem with the harddisk! I tried norton, the hard disk PE or something like that but they all couldn't fix the problem. I tried changing options on these programs to no avail. I cam to the conclusion that the drive needed to be reformated. I tried to use disk setup and reinitalize the disk but it reported that it failed. I tried formating the drive but it failed. If the drive did this in windows then I would toss it because it is bad. <br><br>This is my last resort, I will try to partition and format it on a PC and see what happens. If this works I will try it again in the mac.<br><br> <p>Troy Williams B.Eng.<br><a href=mailto:fenris@hotmail.com>fenris@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>

 

[kenmnh]

I recommend a new drive. If Drive Setup, Norton, and Hard Drive Toolkit all don't work, the drive is dead.

 

[fenris]

I came to that conclusion as well. I replaced the hard drive and everything works great. I must say that this was my first mac that I ever really used, it is nice. The only thing that I don't like is the fact that it does too much for you. It is great for the end user that doesn't know too much about computers, but for me that is why I got into linux.

Thanks for all the tips, it was much appreciated.

 

[ptswolfman]

Last I checked Motorola Starmax carries a five year warranty. Most (if not all) Starmax that I'm aware of have been built within these past five years. The result would be that every Starmax out there is still covered under it's original warranty (one really nice feature about these computers). Technically even if you didn't have the reciept you could have a repair facility check the serial number for when it was built by the manufacturer (most companies will accept that as proof of warranty if you can't supply a reciept).
So if there are still a lot of problems with Starmax out there. Just bring it in...you may be able to fix a lot of the software problems on your own...but it makes it a heck of a lot cheaper when you need to replace hard drives and motherboards and the such.

Hope this info helps. [sig]<a href=mailtotswolfman@home.com>ptswolfman@home.com</a><br><a href=

http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=1402203>Brainbench.com's

Online Certification Transcript</a><br>A+ Certified Technician with service certifications for Macintosh, Compaq, Toshiba, IBM, and HP[/sig]