how do i activate rosetta.

You are not the first having problems with Maya / Rosetta. While I cannot give you an answer, I can guide your eyes to the right to 'More like this' which shows several other questions and answers on the same subject.

And while I'm at it, can I suggest this is an excellent reason for NOT getting involved with Mavericks (or even the Lion family). None of these OS's allow Rosetta to operate.

facebusk wrote:

I dont have the installation disk but i do have it installed on my pc

You mean on your windows PC? You can't install it directly on OSX - Windows and Mac programs are quite different - you would have to use 'BootCamp' or emulation such as Parallels.

'Boot Camp' creates a partition on your hard disk on which you can install Windows (you will need a Windows install disk) and boot into it to run Windows programs exactly as if you were on a PC.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1461

There is no update for Rosetta. It's either on the drive, or it isn't. It's possible however that Rosetta is damaged. Since you don't have the disks, you can fool the OS into thinking it isn't installed. Open Terminal and copy/paste the following line into it:

sudo /usr/sbin/sysctl -w kern.exec.archhandler.powerpc=/usr/libexec/oah/RosettaNonGrata

It will ask for your admin password before completing the command. When back at the prompt, close Terminal.

Now run any PowerPC app. The OS will tell you Rosetta isn't installed and needs to be downloaded. Click Okay and Rosetta will be downloaded from Apple's servers and installed.

If it doesn't download anything (it should), then run this command in Terminal to re-enable Rosetta:

sudo /usr/sbin/sysctl -w kern.exec.archhandler.powerpc=/usr/libexec/oah/translate

There's no need to run this command if the OS does download and install Rosetta. It will already be enabled after that.

Ignore any line wrapping caused by the forums for the Terminal commands above. They are one line and they'll paste as one line into Terminal.

facebusk wrote:

i dont have an admin password.

That means that anyone with access to your Mac can steal all data on it, including bank details.

Resetting or changing a password:

For Snow Leopard or earlier: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1274

For Lion or later: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6022

Snow Leopard does allow a null admin password (later versions do not), but SL and later require an admin password with at least one actual character to perform any sudo command in Terminal.

Follow Klaus1's links to give your admin account some sort of password.

Terminal is accepting your input, but does not show what you're typing on screen (to deter over-the-shoulder folks from seeing what your password is). Just make sure to spell it correctly and press Enter.

i do have it installed on my pc and its not allowing me to install Maya 2009 because the operating system is recognizing it as an intel and not as a PC.

Sorry, I have to ask. I know PC is actually a term for Personal Computer, which can mean any home computer, but do you mean you have the Mac OS installed on generic Windows hardware?

I can only guess at this point that the OS is broken enough that it needs to be reinstalled. Since you have no disks, you're going to have to get a replacement.

What is the make and model of your Mac? You can find out by holding down the Option key, then clicking on the Apple at the upper left and choosing System Information. What does it say at the right for the top four headings? Such as this:

Model Name: Mac Pro

Model Identifier: MacPro5,1

Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Xeon

Processor Speed: 3.33 GHz

I only ask so we can see exactly what model Mac you have. If it originally came with Leopard 10.5.x, then there's no need to get duplicates of the original gray disks. You could just purchase a retail copy of Snow Leopard. If it came with SL, it's important to know if it came with 10.6.4 or later. In which case, you would not be able to use the retail disk and would have to get replacement gray, model specific disks.

This is your exact model. You couldn't move past Snow Leopard if you wanted to. 10.6.8 is the latest OS your Mac will run.

A replacement OS disk is by no means expensive. This isn't Microsoft. You can get a retail, 10.6.3 Snow Leopard disk from Apple for $20.

By broken, I mean the OS is probably damaged, which is preventing software from functioning properly. Not so bad the Mac won't run, but it isn't running the way it should.