I renamed my Mac OS System Library, how can I boot from 10.4 after?

Question

I have an iBook 466 and I accidently renamed the Library while doing a backup under OS Tiger. I could boot into OS 9, but don't have the OS 10.4 Disk. I however installed 10.3 which seemed to work. I was able to find all of my TIger info and organize it into a folder. Now it won't boot on 10.4 but does so on 10.3 and 9.2 I have all of the info but can't get it to boot. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

What is your meaning of "I have all of the info?" Maybe an explanation of that will help to sort this out. How did you manage to install 10.3? Didn't you get a message that OS X is already installed? The installer shouldn't have let you install 10.3 over 10.4. Not an option, normally. You could have more than one drive volume and then you could install 10.3 on a different volume. Is that what you did? Or did you rename "System" also? If that is the case, you need to rename the 10.3 System and Library folders to something such as "System10.3" or just delete them and rename the 10.4 System and Library folders back to "System" and "Library".

You can't really install more than one OS X or other UNIX system on the same drive volume. Each version of UNIX/ OS X needs its own System and Library folders at the root of the drive volume. Installing OS 9 is no problem since OS 9 doesn't use a "Library" or "System" (uses "System Folder").

After you get the 10.4 System and Library named back, chose Mac OS X 10.4 in the Startup Disk Control Panel of OS 9 and restart. Then go online and buy a 10.4 install disk. You will come a cropper sooner or later without one.