OT: paging MAC expert(s) --- What's a Performa?

Are you actually seeing a message "Rebuilding desktop on drive ---"? You shouldn't get that just at boot time unless the desktop database is corrupt (or unless you instructed it to rebuild by holding command and option before the desktop was shown). If it is hung while trying to rebuild (you should hear the hard drive clicking, and the progress bar should be moving... may be slowly, but it should move... a 250mb drive, even fully loaded on a 68k machine shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to rebuild). So... if it is hung, and you rebooted the machine, and it hung AGAIN... then chances are REALLY REALLY good your drive format is damaged. The best bet here, reformat the drive (and run the test on it to verify the drive itself is not bad). Or, since you want to upgrade the drive... just do that and don't worry about the 250 at all. If on the other hand, you are just hung during boot (little icons going across the bottom of the screen, Welcome to Macintosh splash screen is still showing)... then you probably have a bad extension. Reboot the computer, and right after you hear the BONG, hold down the shift key until you see "Welcome To Macintosh Extensions Disabled" on the screen (the extensions disabled will be written below the welcome to mac). Then it should finish booting normally. You can try doing a restart after that (special menu, choose Restart), but it might hang again. Better choice, go to the Apple menu, go to Control Panels, go to Extension Manager, choose "Base" from the popup. Again, this problem will go away if you reformat and reinstall the OS. (I really really think you should just do that before you mess with the machines anymore... it will save you a bundle of heartache... at the VERY least, run Disk First Aid, and let it repair the disk if needed... and then do a clean install of the OS) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>