black screen, white letters

valley69 wrote:
while i was installing leopard on my macbook it notified me that the disk was dirty and needed to be ejected and cleaned. i tried ejecting it with no luck so i tried to restart the computer in regular mode. i guess i chose the wrong option because now my beloved mac is stuck in what looks like DOS mode an all black screen with white letters. what can i do, ive tried the reboot command it just reboots back into the DOS mode ive tried taking the battery out really ive tried just about everything. anyone care to help?

Welcome to the Apple boards:
Boot and hold down the Shift key to start in the Safe mode. When you get to the login screen, click restart.
Or...
Boot and hold down the Option key. Select whatever OS you were upgrading from and see of it boots.

What does your screen say when it has white letters on a black background?

You might also reset your PRAM:
■ Shut down your computer. Turn the computer back on and immediately hold down Command-Option-P-R, continuing to press until you hear the startup sound for the second time. This resets the computer’s parameter random-access memory (PRAM).

IMPORTANT: Resetting PRAM may change some system settings and preferences. Use System Preferences to restore your settings.

See if any of these things help.

Message was edited by: nerowolfe

that's not DOS it's called single user mode. normally you have to hold command+s on the restart to boot into single user mode. at what point EXACTLY did your install fail? did you start the actual install process or did it tell you that the disk is dirty before it actually started installing? also, what kind of install did you try to do? was it an upgrade and install? did you have tiger on your computer before the install? most importantly, do you have a backup?