[Melodi]

I am looking at an older iMac running OS 8.6 and it will not finish booting. Apparently it worked just fine until the 6 year old got on it, who cannot tell us what she did. It will boot with extensions off but not normal boot, it gets half way and just stalls never finishes.
I do not have a recovery CD I only have a MAC OS X CDs. Is there anything in extensions off that I can adjust to stop this boot conflict? Thanks!!!

[VegasACF]

There used to be a program called "Conflict Catcher" that would assist you in the rather laborious task of finding Extension conflicts, but, to be honest, it wasn't much less work than just doing it manually, starting with all off, or basic Mac OS set and then turning them on one at a time and rebooting each time until you find the culprit (it took a few of the steps out of the way for you, but it was still a pain in the ***).

You could try skipping a few steps and turning on a handful and rebooting. If something goes awry you'll at least have the set of potential problems (assuming there's only one) narrowed down to that handful.

Other than that, nope. Sorry. It's a pain. But it's the only way.

[Melodi]

I guess I will be wading thru extensions. Thanks!!

[Melodi]

Vegas:
Thanks for the advice. I finally got around to looking at it again. I booted it to extensions off and then located the 'extension manager' and there was an option for OS 8.6 Base so I turned that on and restarted and it booted right up. The machine is old, but not as old as the one I have, that still uses a floppy to boot up

I'm not even going to try to guess which application was causing the conflict. I'm going to set up an admin and user accounts and not allow admin to anyone.

[VegasACF]

No problem whatsoever. As you have the time and energy you can go back into Extensions Manager and add one or two or a handful and see what happens (since this isn't [seemingly] a mission-critical machine we're dealing with). Keep adding them until you have the same problem you described and you'll know which one (or at least have it limited to the small group you had just enabled) is causing the problem.

Never be afraid to ask questions. That's how I learned!

[Melodi]

Can I bother you again?
I have the training in apple certified help desk technician but only MAC OS X and OS 8.6 appears to be completely different, not to mention that it appears to be set up as a workstation. The hard disk is called 'Documents' and that's all that appears to be on there. I can find the applications folder or folder for the network card driver. It does not appear to go on line, but it does have a NIC and i wanted to check if the NIC is installed correctly

What would you do? thanks