Boot From a CD-ROM

Task #72

Difficulty Level 1

What should you do if Panther itself locks up during the boot process? It is hard to troubleshoot Mac OS X if the operating system constantly freezes because of a system or hard drive error. Luckily, you are not limited to booting from your hard drive: In a pinch, you can actually boot Panther from your Mac OS X installation CD-ROM.

This trick also comes in handy when you want to boot from a third-party utility CD-ROM, such as Norton Utilities from Symantec (www.symantec.com) or DiskWarrior from Alsoft (www.alsoft.com).

Did You Know?

To display a system boot menu during startup — which acts much like the Startup Disk pane in System Preferences — hold down the Option key while starting or restarting your Mac.