I just installed a new hard drive in my mac, and i installed the OS, and when ever i turn the computer on all i see is the folder with the flashing "?" in it. How do I install mac OS 9 properly so the hard drive will mount. Also the hard drive was a windows computer, nothing on it and i took it out and put it in. Not sure if this has anything to do with it.

Just to clarify: is this the primary (boot) drive, or is it a second drive you've added to the system?

It is the primary boot drive. Only hard drive in the machine.

You said it was in a Windows machine before, so two possibilities come to mind first:

1. The drive would have been formatted as as NTFS or FAT32; something didn't quite go right when it was reformatted as a Mac drive.

2. The drive was installed in the Windows machine as a Slave drive, it's now the Master drive in the Mac, but the Master/Slave/Cable Select jumpers on the drive weren't reconfigured to reflect that change.

Of course, since you're getting the flashing "where the heck is the System Folder?" icon, it's aslo possible that the installation itself just didn't happen 100% correctly.

How do i reformat it as a Mac drive? Is there a utility on the install cd? Also a technician on in an apple store told me to go to Apple>Control Panel>Startup disk and select the system folder to boot from, but that didnt work ethier. When i install the only thing that doesnt work is zipie and that has to do with the internet. Not sure if that would make such a big deal.

Well how the heck would that work if the system won't even boot :mrgreen:

Did you check out my suggestion about verifying the correct
Master/Slave jumper configuration?

Boot in with the cd, and i did that, but it still didnt work, and im just double checking the master/slave jumper settings now. And it looks okay. How do i format the hard drive for a mac?

Hello as regards to hard drive and no Icon coming up just the flashing ? I have just gone through the same thing with a OS8.6 Mac. I tried every trick in the book and I received some very good advice from this site. In the end in desperation I gave the hard drive a good knock with the handle of a screw driver as it was trying to start up. It made a squealing sound and I shut down. After a few minutes I re started and it booted up the way it should. This computer had been out of service for some time. May be there was nothing wrong with your old H/drive. Hope this helps.Norm Stewart.