Got a call from a woman whose Beige PowerMac G3 was refusing to boot. Classic symptom: flashing question mark emblazoned disk. Obviously the hard drive or system folder has some kind of error, the only problem is that she can’t boot from a system CD because the CD drive apparently doesn’t work.

I tell her I’ll come over, and with me I’m going to bring a brand new 52x internal CD Burner (the Lite-ON 52246S), a copy of Alsoft’s wonderful Disk Warrior, and a screwdriver, and get to work.

The first thing I usually ask a client is, did anything precipitate this malfunction? A system crash, newly installed hardware or software, anything unusual. Nothing she can think of. Okay. Before I put open up the case to put in the new CD drive I attempt to boot from the Disk Warrior CD with the current drive. Sho’ ’nuff, just as she said, the drive immediately spits it out. Not tasty.

The good news is I can hear the hard disk spinning up, so it’s probably a recoverable error, whatever it is, and not a dead drive. I just have to get access to it! I swap in the lite-on drive, one that’s not officially mac supported but which I’ve used in this very same model G3 with great success. Power back on. Insert DiskWarrior. Reboot, hold C key. …. ptooey, out spits the CD again.

For forty five minutes I try everything, growing ever frustrated. Zap P-RAM. Disconnect hard drive cable. Disconnect CD drive cable. Remove CMOS battery. Reset power management unit. Boot into open firmware. Fiddle. Repeat. Nothing.

I’m flummoxed, and I again ask if anything prompted this situation, anything at all. Sheepishly she offers…

“Well, it’s probably totally unrelated, it’s silly to mention, but the last few times I was using the computer the mouse was acting funny. Like it was ‘clicking’ and holding down even when I wasn’t–”

A wave of relief and revelation passes over me. While she’s still describing the problem I remove the mouse cable and power the machine on.

A happy mac appears.

A not-so-commonly known command on Macintosh computers: Holding down the mouse button at startup will eject the removable disc drive. The faulty mouse had been causing the system to eject the CD and preventing any kind of booting whatsoever.

With the mouse removed Disk Warrior booted; I plugged the mouse in and though it as tricky due to the sticky mouse button I ran DiskWarrior and repaired a number of minor errors to the drive. I rebooted, unplugging the mouse to be safe, and the system started up from the hard drive like a champ.

A hard-won job, with a few lessons for the future. Even a seemingly unrelated problem can be the root of a larger issue. And if all else fails, unplug the freakin’ mouse.

postscript: Let it be known that the though it wasn’t absolutely necessary, the client chose to keep the LIte-ON 52x burner, as everyone should have one these days. Since this particular drive doesn’t have native OS9 Finder burning support I replaced the LiteOnCDR file in the Authoring-Support folder in System Folder: Extensions with a ‘hacked’ one found at xlr8yourmac.com ; Again, works like a champ.