Can't start up. Not from cd, not from option key, just question mark.

I thought I knew what happened -- tomorrow's my deadline for a two-month project. It never fails. Well, I've moved my deadline but it still won't startup. I just don't get it. Here's the story:

I'm running OSX 10.2.5 or 10.2.6 on a Dual Gig G4 with a partitioned hard drive. I'm pretty sure that it's 10.2.6 and believe I installed and restarted yesterday -- the last day my computer worked. When I left it, I had booted in OS 9.2.2 so that I could create some RealPlayer streaming video files. I left with a big batch compressing overnight. When I came down this morning, my computer appeared to be sleeping -- the display was dark and the little button was glowing... but I couldn't wake it. I did a hard shut down then it only started with the questionmark folder and questionmark harddrive.

I tried booting with the option key in, but it only gives me one 9.2.2 disk option. When I select it, the flashing questionmark folder happens for a while again, then the little os 9 smiley computer face comes on and stays that way. I left it for more than an hour and it never did anything else.

I've tried shocking the PRAM, which I can do but it makes no difference. I've tried booting with the extensions off, but no difference. I tried booting from a cd (the software install disk, Disk Warrior, and Norton Utilities) to no avail. The closest I've come is with the Norton Utilities disk (which is an older version that I don't think should work anyways -- it's version 5.0). It begins to start up in system 8.6 and then drops a bomb message that says something like "...trap... try booting up with extensions off..." Anyways, I know this old version of Norton shouldn't work, but I've tried everything.

I booted up holding down "T" and was able to get the hard drives to appear on another computer via firewire. I made a copy of some key files (though not all -- I have way too many gigs to copy). I ran disk warrior on two of the partitions, but not the one I usually use for startup -- it wouldn't let me. It says must quit all applications first -- apparently it thinks something is running on that disk. When I run Norton Disk doctor (from another computer that has my crashed computer mounted via firewire) it reports some major problems, but I did not have it fix them since I don't believe my version of Norton is for OSX. Can I go ahead an fix the problems or will this screw it up more?

That's pretty much where I am now. I don't know what to try next. I'm working freelance and have a $10K project on that machine (which I was ready to turn in tomorrow) that I'd really like not to loose.

ANY SUGGESTIONS GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!!

Thanks in advance for your thoughts,

Douglas

Thanks Tony.

Just in case anyone else ever has this problem, here is what finally worked. At one point I was able to start up from the system install OSX disk and run Disk Utility... but that didn't help.

What I did was restart holding down the "T" key, which boots it up as a target disk, just like an external firewire drive. I then connected it via firewire to another mac and ran Disk Warrior on my startup disk. It found problems. At one point I had to hold my breath because after finding the problems it said that for a "fail-safe" replace of the directory I needed to create 49M of contiguous space. After trying a number of ways to do that I finally went for it and fortunately there were no interruptions during the replace and I was able to boot up just fine. I'm not sure what triggered it, but now I'll know what to do if it happens again.

I thought holding down the "T" key was a cool trick -- even though I couldn't boot it up, I could see all of my hard drives and back them up from another computer before moving forward.

Cheers,

Douglas

Same thing really, repair the permissions, start off the CD and use the Disk Utility or use Norton 7, if you have it. If that does not work, reinstall OS X with the Archive & Install option.

Tony!