This is prolly why someone got rid of the box. It's OS is buggered.
Do a clean install and quit trying to figure out a quite likely buggered system on an OS that you don't know.
You'll drive yourself nuts. Plus this will give you a better idea of how Apple intended you to start. Also, quite likely, a faster boot and faster running sys.

I found an old thread with some links to browsers for OS9. I clicked on the one for IE and it started d'loading the file.. so I know that one is good.

OS 9 Browsers...

YIM (Yahoo Instant Messenger) 3.0 is for OS X. It will not install on your system. You will have to find things that are, at least, 10 years old.

The same goes for browsers. Nuc's link gives you some good information and links to compatible apps, but face it--yu're not going to be able to download and install most stuff.

That's why I pointed out the IE link... it downloads IE 5.1.7

Probably because you had to shut the machine down hard, the hard drive is doing some clean up. You should do as suggested and invest about $100 in a newer G4 Mac that is running OS X. You have a hard battle ahead otherwise in OS 9, and the results won't be satisfactory.

Well, all this spawns another vital question:

I got the machine for free. It has OS 9.2 installed on it. I am disabled, living on Social (in)Security, and have a VERY limited income. I was able to secure an Apple Macontish CD for the Power Macintosh G3 . It has OS 8 on it (must be the install disk).

My question would be if it'd be better to reload OS 8, since the current OS seems "damaged" or try to fix the current OS?

OR -- would it be better to load OS X on this thing - 1- would OS X work on this G3, and if so, 2 - where would I locate an OS X install CD

Thanks

Unfortunately OS 8 will be worse than OS 9.2 on the internet, probably almost impossible. You'd go from something that is somewhat usable, to something that is pretty much just a novelty and not very functional for everyday use.

You can put OS X 10.2.8 on that machine all depending on how much RAM is in it and how big the hard drive is. ebay usually has Jaguar (10.2) install CD's for $25 shipped. It would give a better example of what the Mac really is right now, but even with it some internet stuff isn't going to function right.


Did you try moving anything with Norton in the name from your Control Panels folder and from your Extensions folder like yoyo suggested?

You can also set Extensions Manager that is in Control Panels to Mac only extensions and it will move all the Norton stuff to the appropriate (Disabled) folders in the System Folder, and also move any other third party stuff that might be causing problem too.

Yeah, I got rid of Norton. Just deleted all the folders, and I don't see any Norton activity now.

The machine is 266Mhz, with a 6Gb HD, and 640Mb of memory.

Did you delete the files from Extensions and Control Panels along with the folders?