HELP: Macintosh "Finder" problem.

Question for you Mac people...appreciate any help:


At one of the schools we deal with, they have a Macintosh lab with a bunch of old-school Macs running OS 7.5.1. Many of them have a random problem with "Finder" and the computer will only allow you to restart. I have no idea where to go for help, and Apple wants to charge us like a $125 one-time tech-support call.

So for any of you people who've had experience with the old Macs, please reply here. The nearest company that deals with Macintosh is over 100 miles away, and the school does not want to have them come all the way down.

And on a side note to this question, how do I get OS 7.5.1 to boot from a CD? I've looked on the internet, and they say to use "SHIFT+OPTION+Open-Apple+DEL", but that doesn't work. I've tried just about every key combination that is possible. We need to reinstall the OS on one of the Macs because no matter what we do, we cannot replace "macTCP" with the actual "TCP/IP" unit in the Control Panel.

Thanks in advance guys, your help is greatly appreciated.

Matt

Start by holding down

Command+option while starting up....
when prompted say "yes" that you do wish to rebuild the desktop file.
(some claim this does nothing.... but it always makes me feel better)

Next go into the HARD DRIVE>SYSTEM FOLDER>PREFERENCES>
and toss the "finder preferences" in the trash and restart.

Now.... if you continue to get that problem... doing a restart and hold the "spacebar" while restarting.... when the dialog comes up... open the dropdown menu and select "OS 7.5 Base" restart and run the machine....
If you don't get the problem... it is a 3rd party extension or one that is not in the base set of extensions.

as far as restarting on a CD
you can:
Hold the "C" key while restarting... (with CD in drive)
Hold Command+option+shift+delete while restarting (with CD in drive)
OR click the apple (top left) go to "control panels" and then to "start up disk" and select the CD that is in the drive.

Thanks Torn, I'll let you know how I came out on Monday or Tuesday when I can get back to the school.