invalid key length

swordfishswordfish
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Can anyone give me some advice here? I recently put a second hard drive and upgraded my memory in my G4. When I restarted, I got a message saying Keys 4, 278 out of order, but it still ran. About a week later, I got error messages saying Invalid Key Length 4, 788 and the system folder wouldn't show up. Disk Aid won't fix whatever is going on. Any ideas as to what this means, what caused it, and how to fix it? Any feedback greatly appreciated.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    madmax559madmax559 Posts: 596member
    backtrack....

    its sounds like a corrupt fs/hash entry but...



    remove the ram first just to be sure its

    not a bad stick



    see if error persists...

    chck 2nd hdd or remove that & make sure primary works..



    dumb q....are the hdd's jumpered properly ?

    aka master slave or on diff ide channels ?
  • Reply 2 of 6
    swordfishswordfish Posts: 11member
    madmax559- Thanks for the suggestions. I checked the memory-- all is well; it now has 1.5 running fine. I partitioned the second drive and loaded OS 9.2 (which I usually run) in one partition and OSX in the other. It starts up fine with either of these if I unplug the master drive (original drive). If I unplug the new drive, the computer won't start and the old drive (primary) won't mount. Any ideas? You mentioned a corrupt fs/hash entry as a possibility. What is that? Thanks for the reply.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    madmax559madmax559 Posts: 596member
    It starts up fine with either of these if I unplug the master drive (original drive).



    check your orignal drive is it set to cable select ?



    are you plugging both hdd's into the same ide channel ? if so they need to be jumpered correctly

    (master/slave)



    if each is on its own ide channel then it doesnt

    matter



    your orignal hdd may be borked...
  • Reply 4 of 6
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Important point re: RAM... *how* did you check it? The MacOS X supplied RAM checker from Apple doesn't (or at least didn't) run a full low level diagnostic. Gauge Pro for MacOS 9 *does* however.



    I had a bad stick in my Pismo and the Apple tool said "All okay", but Gauge Pro correctly identified the problem.



    I had *exactly* the same symptoms you're seeing... I chased down the hard drive path for a couple of months (even replaced it) before finding out the RAM was bad.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    swordfishswordfish Posts: 11member
    Kickaha- Thanks for the thought. I took out ALL the new RAM, put in just the old stuff and it still gave me the same errors. Now, the old drive (master) is not mounting at all, although I am able to access the OS9 that I loaded into one of the partitions of the new drive and OSX that I loaded into the other. When using EITHER of these, I am still unable to access the old drive. If I unplug the old drive, I can access either of the 2 new partitions; if I unplug the new drive, I can't get any OS to run. Any other thoughts? I appreciate the feedback.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    You'll continue to see those same errors until you reformat the drive, or use TechTool Pro, Drive10 or some such tool to attempt to fix it. Those are not transient errors, those are corruptions of the primary headers on your drive, and the more you use it, the more problems you're likely to see.



    Just putting in the old RAM isn't going to make the problems go away, the disk itself is corrupted.



    1) Boot into 9, use Gauge Pro to eliminate the RAM as a problem source. This is easy and quick. Check versiontracker.com for Gauge Pro. If something is bad, you know what the problem is and can fix the source.



    2) Get Drive10, or another tool and fix the headers. This will fix the symptoms *only*. If you have bad RAM, then the drives will continue to be corrupted.



    If you replace the RAM, your drive is still corrupted. You have two problems here: corrupt drive (symptom) and something else (source). Check the RAM with Gauge Pro, really.
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