No, I can get to single-user mode no problem, it doesn't require a login. Going into "safe" mode looks similar but also references "Darwin" and says something about "console" and has my account as the home directory rather than root.

It's supposed to be running OS 10.4.10

I've downloaded the .11 upgrade onto a thumbdrive but I can't figure out how to install it. Or if that will help.

Huh. First of all, sorry for the assumption.

When you say it's aking for a login in safe mode, does it ask for the login with the normal mac os login screen? or with a plain-text prompt? anything else on screen during the boot sequence? (gray screen, blue screen, sad mac icon, question mark....)

Have you tried booting in verbose mode? Like single-user, but holding down the "v" instead of the "s" -- this may show you how far it's getting in the boot process before something fails.

Hmm... I don't have any real ideas yet, but I'll do some poking around when I get home in half an hour or so. Also, a general "yipes"!

Plain-text prompt.

Let's see, it goes gray apple with spinny thing, loading Mac OS X blue screen, black-screen with white text plain-text prompt for login.

If I boot up normally, it goes through all that and after a flash of the black-screen it goes to a blank blue screen that I can move the cursor around on with the mouse but otherwise does nothing.

I have not tried verbose mode, but I will in a moment!

Thanks very much, amych, it's fantastic to have something else to try and confirmation that this is bizarre.

OK, booting in verbose mode gets me a bunch of text that doesn't stick around long enough for me to make sense of it, then a blank blue screen, then the same console login screen that I get in "safe" mode, then a blank blue screen again (before I have a chance to log in), then a black screen with what looks like a block cursor in the upper left. It cycles back and forth between those last two.

I also tried putting it into Target mode and using my laptop to run Disk First Aid or whatever it's called on it. No problems found.

And my husband has found a corrupted Framework file and replaced it. That seems to have done the trick.

OK, I had to add the following function to as asp.net page:

Protected Overrides Sub Render(ByVal writer As System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter)


Response.ContentType = "application/ms-excel"
            Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline;filename=StandardReport.xls")
            DataList1.RenderControl(writer)

OK, I had to add the following function to as asp.net page:

Protected Overrides Sub Render(ByVal writer As System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter)


     Response.ContentType = "application/ms-excel"
     Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline;filename=StandardReport.xls")
      DataList1.RenderControl(writer)
end sub

This works fine (document opens as an excel spreasheet.) But now I want to modify the page to either output to excel or to regular html (using an if statement for the server-executed code). The problem is since my new subroutine overrides the Render function, I have to specify the content type and header for a normal http/html web page. I'm not sure what to use. So far I have this:

Response.ContentType = "text/html"
Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "what goes here")

I think the first one is correct, but I don't know about the second. Googling has failed me so far because everything I've found is about the non-html exceptions (pef, etc.) Any guesses as to what this should be?

eta: Or I suppose it's possible that the

Protected Overrides Sub Render

messes things up more for http/html and I'd have to do more to fix it, in which case I might just have to have two versions of the page.

eta² OK, I gave up and made two separate pages. Pro'lly a bad idea to tell the compiler, "OK, I want to override this function - no wait, I don't."

On my iBook G4, anytime I start up from a shut down, my skype auto-starts. How can I make it stop doing that?

Right-click the Skype icon in the dock and unselect "open at login." I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally ticked that box for something ridonkulous like Photoshop that I really DON'T need opening every time I turn on the computer.