iMac blinking question mark....

[murrfinn]

Hi! I am having serious trouble with a G3/350 iMac at work.

It was running OS 9.2 fine until the other day. According to a coworker, it suddenly became unable to open any programs or do much of anything. Now, on startup, it flashes the question mark alternating with a happy Mac.

Here's what I've done so far that hasn't worked:

Started up from a system CD. It recognizes the OS 10 CD, but not 9.04 or 8.6 (We don't have 9.2 CDs). I installed System 10 but it was pretty useless once I got to the desktop, since everything we have is Classic-compatible and the Classic environment won't start up.

Run Disk Doctor. According to DD, the drive's fine.

Run Apple Hardware Test CD. Ditto.

Swapped hard drives. I put the iMac's hard drive into another iMac, wiped it and reinstalled System 9.04, and it worked just fine. Put it back in the old machine only to see that it didn't affect a thing.

Checked all the internal connections. Nada.

We just got this computer (used) and can't afford to get another one. Any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks so much.

Susanna
Arlington, Va.

 

[gunthnp]

put the hard back in the other mac run the updates to 9.2 if the firmware was update you may need 9.2 to run or higher you can download the updates from apples website make sure to update the desktop on pre os 10 oses

gunthnp
Have you ever woken up and realized you where not alive.