Thread
7.6.1 on a PM 6100 - startup problem
My Power Mac 6100/60 AV refuses to run 7.6.1. I installed a brand new system from a retail 7.6.1 CD and everything went fine during the installation, but as soon as I restarted I got this white window and the system frozen with no mouse pointer:
Shift-booting works, so I thought it's an extension problem. I disabled everything in the Extensions Manager - still not working.
What else I should try? Is there a known incompatibility between 6100 and Mac OS 7.6.1? 7.1.2, 7.5.5, 8.1 and 8.6 work fine on that computer.
PS: I also tried installing 7.6 from an Apple Software Restore CD containing all systems for all Macs, including the 6100... still the same problem.
Shift-booting works, so I thought it's an extension problem. I disabled everything in the Extensions Manager - still not working.
What else I should try? Is there a known incompatibility between 6100 and Mac OS 7.6.1? 7.1.2, 7.5.5, 8.1 and 8.6 work fine on that computer.
PS: I also tried installing 7.6 from an Apple Software Restore CD containing all systems for all Macs, including the 6100... still the same problem.
I checked the connections and took off the RAM (2 x 32 MB), the CD-ROM unit and the Ethernet transceiver, it still doesn't work.
I don't think it's a hardware problem since Mac OS 8.1 on another partitition works fine, and also 7.5.5 which was installed before. I erased the hard drive before I installed 7.6.1 and 8.1.
On another forum someone told me he had the very same problem with his 6100. He eventually found a 7.6.1 version which worked fine, but he has no idea how the problem fixed itself.
I don't think it's a hardware problem since Mac OS 8.1 on another partitition works fine, and also 7.5.5 which was installed before. I erased the hard drive before I installed 7.6.1 and 8.1.
On another forum someone told me he had the very same problem with his 6100. He eventually found a 7.6.1 version which worked fine, but he has no idea how the problem fixed itself.
Problem solved!
Here's what I did. I booted from an Apple Software Restore CD (the one that has all Mac OS versions prior to 9) and initialized the hard drive (again) using Drive Setup 1.7.3. This time I only made a single partition. Then I updated the disk driver. This is something I don't remember doing before, at least not using Drive Setup 1.7.3. And finally I installed 7.6 and 7.6.1 from that Apple Software Restore CD.
I tried installing from that CD before and it failed, so I can only assume updating the disk driver using Drive Setup 1.7.3 did the trick. The idea came to me after reading this tech note:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1249?viewlocale=en_US
Mac OS 7.6 discs have an earlier version of Drive Setup (1.2.2) so it's possible 1.7.3 did something different to the disk.
Here's what I did. I booted from an Apple Software Restore CD (the one that has all Mac OS versions prior to 9) and initialized the hard drive (again) using Drive Setup 1.7.3. This time I only made a single partition. Then I updated the disk driver. This is something I don't remember doing before, at least not using Drive Setup 1.7.3. And finally I installed 7.6 and 7.6.1 from that Apple Software Restore CD.
I tried installing from that CD before and it failed, so I can only assume updating the disk driver using Drive Setup 1.7.3 did the trick. The idea came to me after reading this tech note:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1249?viewlocale=en_US
Mac OS 7.6 discs have an earlier version of Drive Setup (1.2.2) so it's possible 1.7.3 did something different to the disk.