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Hi ,I have just replaced the hard drive on my Power PC mini and can't boot using my installation CD holding down the C . key of course. All iget is a gray screen and flashing question mark . What went wrong ?Help please. I did a PRAM reset and also tried to boot pressing Option .
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You have to be able to get to your hard drive of course. If your DVD is bad or your drive is bad you only have a couple of options. The easiest is to use Target Mode. Hook it up to another Mac (it needs to be the same type of processor)(intel or Power PC). Do via a firewire cable and start your original machine holding down the "T" key. Now run Disk Utilities from the other machine. First format the drive then install the system.
You can also try an external firewire DVD drive.
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3 Comments
Mr.Mayer, i am sorry for misleading you with my badly stated original question. I have tried every suggested ways out of this predicament that I could find here and in Apple support . I am pretty sure this is a lost cause. My question is : what could have gone wrong? And if there's an answer to that: can it be fixed? I had no problems replacing the hard drive. Would a defective Installation CD be the reason for the malfunction?
by mickmich
Why did you replace the hard drive? What was it doing before you replaced it? Do you have another Mac? What's the last three letters of your serial number or the speed of your processor?
by mayer
Thanks a lot. I will not be able to use Target Mode as the only powerPC Mac I have here is an old iMac that lacks a firewire port. But the external DVD drive , I can find easily. I will try that and I guess, if that fails, it means that somehow I messed up my new hard drive. I am hoping for a bad DVD. Thanks again for your help.
by mickmich