Sensitive little buggers these Macs. Must have heard me telling it to get stuffed so it did.
To wit, I can't get any desktop icons on bootup. When I startup I get the normal sound, then the apple icon in the centrre of the screen, then the Starting Mac-OSX graphic, so far so good. Then eventually the mouse arrow moves to the top left of the screen where a message appears:
Darwin/BSD (Local Host) (Console)
Login
Whenever I try to enter the only login or password I can remember having, a very quick message flashes up saying Login Incorrect then something else which disappears too quickly for me to read it, and the blank desktop appears together with the cogwheel spinning away endlessly.
In one of my many attempts, prompted by what action I can't remember I got the following error message
Could not create Disk Rrb session or approval session.
Not having anything to click a mouse on leaves me in a spot of bother.
I wonder, thinks I, what will happen if I boot up with the OSX installation disc in the slot. Buggerall happened that's what, except the eject button doesn't work so the installation disk is still in there.
This problem didn't occur after my doing anything in particular, no upgrades etc, just out of the blue.
iMac G5, Tiger 9 initially installed, latest upgrade I think was 10.4.1.
I tried a couple of Mac forums but apart from bootup, login, desktop etc I couldn't think of what search terms to enter. If any of the experts here have any suggestions or references to a good support forum I would appreciate it. I just want to rescue the information from the hard drive, so just getting to the desktop would be a nice start. Or am I too late?