See wood_e. I spent some frustrating hours this weekend just past with an installation of OS 9.2.2 onto a 9650/G3/500MHz. Two drives with the identical installation (the second a copy of the first one's model installation of 9.1/9.2.1/9.2.2), one with an existing installation of 9.1, and a fourth drive with no system, for storage. Start Manager got as far as Happy Mac on each drive with a System, and then stuck. Even booting from an OS 9-containing CD (OS 9 Install, or DiskWarrior) was inordinately slow, but ultimately successful. Having exhausted all other rational possibilities with no improvement, while booted from an OS 9 CD I dragged Finder to top folder level from each System Folder in turn, closed the System Folder, and then dropped Finder back onto the closed System Folder. Voilà!

In umpty-ump years I've seldom had to rebless System Folders, but it paid off in spades in this instance.

de