MacBook Pro :: Powerbook 13 Cannot Boot Up
May 9, 2012
My Power book will not boot up. Upon powerup up I get the usual "bong" sound and then after several seconds I get a large icon in the shape of a gray folder blinking on and off with a white queston mark inserted in the folder. I have run the hardware test on the applications install disc and it checks out OK with the advsnced test. I have tried to reboot using the OSX Install DVD but it will not boot holding down "C" when starting up. When I try to reinstall OS X it stalls out because it cannot find a drive file to install in. Any ideas on what has crapped out, is it HD issue?
Info:MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.6.3), Model A1278
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Sep 13, 2009
I have OSX installed on a very old Powerbook. Well it was working and then I left it for awhile and now it is giving me the good old folder to question mark screen (maybe someone dropped it?). Well I'm not much of a mac user so I looked up all of the different boot key commands and tried to boot from my OSX CD. Holding down C did nothing, and neither did ANY of the other commands except holding down option and that key command that restarts the computer (apple, option, shift, esc?). Anyway, I got into the screen that shows your hard drive and all other devices and it actually listed the CD drive so I clicked it and clicked the next arrow. I waited for awhile and then the screen reloaded (as if it was rescanning for removable devices) and then stopped and only displayed the local disk. What is going on?! It only sometimes displays the CD in this screen and the next arrow never does anything regardless!!
I really don't know any of the computers stats but if I were to guess they're pretty bad. All I know is it used to run OSX just fine and then other people used it and now it doesn't do anything.
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Oct 17, 2010
Got a Powerbook G4 with a "messed up" HD. Couldn't fix it, so got a firewire drive and ran a bunch of utilities from my newer intel iMac. Cloned the Powerbook's drive to a USB hard drive, did all repairs on the USB drive, formatted the Powerbook, cloned the USB drive BACK to the Powerbook, but it just gives me the flashing question mark when I try to boot.
What is REALLY weird is I can boot my iMac FROM THE CLONE ON THE USB DRIVE and it works fine.In Drive Genius the Powerbook drive (in TDM) shows as a single drive, but if I go to "Repartition" then it shows 3 smaller partitions on the drive; I believe they're called "Apple Free Space" or something like that (can't check right now, I'm running Repair on it AGAIN at the moment).
I feel like I'm missing something simple, like the machine just doesn't see one thing that tells it "Oh, yeah! There's an operating system on this drive!" I have tried partitioning from Drive Genius and Disk Utility. Have done clones back and forth with Drive Genius, Disk Utility, and Carbon Copy Cloner. Same results each time.
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Jan 11, 2009
Today my Powerbook fell to the floor from about 2 feet up.
At first all seemed OK, but I then noticed that Safari wouldn't start up, so i went to reboot to see if this would resolve the issue.
Anyway, upon turning the powerbook back on, it is going no further than the very first screen of the light grey background, with dark grey Apple logo in the centre of the screen, accompanied a few seconds later by the revolving "please wait" icon (apologies if this icon has a technical term - unfortunately i don't know what it's called!), and it just stays like that, without getting to the blue login screen.
I have tried going into Single User and Verbose modes to see if i can boot up that way, but no joy.
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Jun 23, 2008
I have a G4 Powerbook laptop. I have never had any trouble with it. It suddenly now will not start OS10. It starts up fine and the blue screen comes up and it says starting OS X. the blue bar lights all the way up then it just gets stuck.
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Oct 15, 2008
My sons powerbook G4 died. He said it got slow and just hung. He forced it off and now it wont boot. It comes up to the apple logo then stops. No spinner or anything. I reset power management. When I try to boot from the install CD I get a kernel panic.
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Oct 6, 2010
I just recently purchased a powerbook g4 (1.33 12 inch) from PowerON Services. I turned it on for the first time and I was prompted to update to stuff ( osX being one of them) It then froze while installing the updates.
Now It wont boot, it is stuck on the grey screen. I tried loading from a tiger disc that I have but that didnt work. I just get a funky message saying to hold the restart button. Any words of wisdom??????
also note i tried resetting PRAM and tried booting in safe mode.
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Mar 24, 2012
I have had OSX 10.5 installed on one of my hard drives for quite some time and use it occasionally. Yesterday I installed the update to 10.5.8 and it will not boot anymore. The updater reported a successful installation, but when trying to boot from 10.5.8, the little lines in the startup circle keep going around for up to a half hour without end. Unfortunately, I cannot find my original 10.5 upgrade disk, though I still have the packaging and documentation that came with it.
Info:
Powerbook G4, iMac G5, Mac OS X (10.4.3)
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Sep 13, 2009
I have a very old PowerBook that did have OSX running on it fine. Recently it has stopped working completely and when you startup it takes you to a blue screen with a question mark and a finder icon flashing on top of a folder. If you give it long enough it will just shut off. I have tried booting from a CD but I can't seem to get that to work. I boot up holding down the option key and it brings me to a window with a picture of my hard drive and a picture of the CD drive but when I click the cd drive and then click the forward button it merely acts like it's refreshing the list and doesn't actually boot from the CD at all. I've also tried holding down C during boot up but it ignores that and just goes to the same old flashing question mark and finder icon screen. The CD I am trying to boot from is the same OSX cd that I originally installed OSX on this computer from so I know it works.
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Jan 24, 2007
I have a powerbook 12' 867 mghz, I know I would rather have a new one, but not ready to give up on this old gal yet! Anywhoo I thought the logic board was fried but after letting the powerbook "rest" I came back months later and sometimes it will boot but as soon as I try to do anything it freezes, so maybe the harddrive is fried? How do you get it to ignore the internal drive so it will boot from an external?
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Dec 2, 2008
I just recently started to experience some very unusual behavior on an older PowerBook G4, and I was wondering if anyone has experienced this before, as I can't seem to find any documented info on this.Basically, out of the blue, the user began to experience issues waking from sleep, while using the laptop closed with external monitor, USB keyboard and mouse. Although a powercord was always connected, the machine seemed to be powering off.For a while, hitting the power button would boot things up again, properly, but not anymore. I have since disconnected all peripherials. Now, when pressing the power button, the machine will beep 3 times and then repeat itself every so often. The sleep led will blink three times, go solid, then repeat. Sometime the harddrive tries to spin, sometimetimes not
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Sep 1, 2009
I have a second hand 12" PowerBook G4 that sometimes will not boot. It will sometimes chime and the LCD will stay black. Like I said this does not always happen. I have already tried to reset the PRAM and PMU and this does not seem to have any bearing on the machine.
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Jun 29, 2008
I am currently running a 15" Powerbook G4 1.67, 1GB ram, latest update for 10.5.
Yesterday my computer randomly went to sleep and wouldn't wake up. I forced it to shut down and then tried rebooting it. It started up, but went to sleep before even getting to the login screen. I have searched the internet, this website, and the apple support site to try and fix the problem.
I have tried resetting the PMU (although I don't know if I did that correctly), leaving it to rest without any battery or AC power hooked up to it, and the CMD + ALT + P + R reset all to no avail.
It seems like the general outcome for random sleep problems hasn't been too good,
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Nov 7, 2006
when my PowerBook (15", bought new in Aug 2004) wakes from sleep, the harddrive makes a dreaded tapping/clicking sound. It's very prominent and is not your standard HDD "chatter."Often, Finder will hang and I'm forced to power-cycle the machine. Most of the time, it boots without incident.Lately, however, there have been incidents. Tonight, when I got home, it froze. I tried to power-cycle it, but got nothing. I plugged it in.
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Jan 28, 2008
I have a 12" Powerbook G4 running 10.3.9 Panther. I am having problem booting my computer from a Firewire HD. I have done a search in the forum but cannot get a definite and/or successul solution. Forum moderators and my respected macrumor fellows, please feel free to direct me to a specific link if you find the questions redundant.Recently, I have had the HD making terrible noise and several days ago, the computer cannot boot at all. When I pushed the power button, the screen shows a folder in the middle with a Mac face and switches to a question mark back and forth. However, it just gets stuck at that stage. I suspected that I have a HD problem and wanted to boot from my clone Firewire HD. Unfortunately, the computer will not boot with Firewire HD either.
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Jul 6, 2009
when power pressed to boot, it will go into boot, but then the screen starts flickering from dim to bright a clicking sound is heard, the power cord on the side changes from dark to light amber. the screen then goes to black. some times am able to get to log in then it just goes black.- More information- my harddrive had been making erratic noises for about... 3-4 months. some loud clicking... in thinking that the hd failed i bought a 160gb WD Scoirpio blue IDE drive... These problems still persist. even when i option to start up with my external drive, which i have mirrored my hard drive. it will boot up for the external then this clicking noise as noted above.
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Mar 13, 2010
to run ppc g4 powerbook from external hard drive with apps from external hd drive intel imac g5? I have a firewire hd but it is not being recognized by the ppc.
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Jun 23, 2014
My PowerBook G4 (Ti, 867MHz) just decided it didn't want to boot today...
The PowerBook has been asleep and not used for a few weeks. I woke it up last week for a few minutes to try and print out a document. It restarted just fine after installing the printer driver. Then it went back asleep until today.
I decided I had better shut it down as it has been sleeping a lot. It's shut down for about 5 minutes when I boot it back up to find it stuck at the Apple logo with the (spinning) spinner. What I tried to do to solve the problem:
1. Booted into Terminal mode (command-s) and typed exit so I could see the boot log. It appears to attempt to boot yet repeatedly prints:
> localhost /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow[92]: Login Window Application Started -- Threaded auth
> localhost loginwindow[92]: _RegisterApplication(), FAILED TO establish the default connection to the WindowServer, _CGSDefaultConnection() is NULL.
[Code] ....
2. Booted into Terminal again, and mounted the volume. I was able to do ls to list the file contents - so I CAN get to my files. It's not a disk issue. Then I ran fsck -fy. It reported the disk as OK.
3. Rebooted and reset PRAM. No change
4. Reset NVRAM. No change.
5. Popped in the Leopard install disc and restarted. Booted into Leopard disc.
6. Tried to repair permissions from Leopard disc - it just hung and I had to cancel the process.
7. Verified disk from Leopard disc. Reported as OK.
8. Clicked the next button on the install screen. Tried to install. "You don't have enough space"... The skimpy 40GB HD is so packed with stuff that it can't install. And my external HD won't connect to it, it never shows up. Not like I can move off anything anyway as it won't boot...
I CANNOT format the HD. I have stuff on there I can't lose. Does the Terminal recognize and mount USB devices so I can copy from the Terminal? If not I guess I could delete some apps and Xcode and stuff, maybe the System folder...
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Oct 4, 2008
I just bought a powerbook, and I'm trying to get it to turn on. It doesn't have a hard drive, so obviously it won't be able to get it to boot. I just want to be able to get to the flashing folder. When I press the power button, the computer does nothing, not even the fan spins. The only indication I have that it is on is the caps lock light turns on. I've tried resetting the pram, but the screen stays blank and does nothing. I don't have any ram modules in it, so it shouldn't be a ram problem.
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Nov 1, 2006
So I've got a powerbook G4, thats 8 days past its warranty. Conveniently, it now won't turn on. It won't wont boot from CD. If I turn it on, I get a gray screen that usually just turns my computer back off, if thats not the case I get a screen that shows the finder icon and a question mark and then turns off.
All it will do is boot into open firmware mode. Currently the install disc is inside of it and I've tried booting the cd using "cd:, bxi" and "dir hd", and it can't open both. Does anyone know how to wipe the HD, and start the installer using firmware? Otherwise, I think I'll have to take out the harddrive and plug it into an external case and then wipe it.
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Jan 31, 2010
I have a G4 powerbook with an LCD that only displays the top 25% of the screen. I've been using an external monitor with it just fine. Today, I reinstalled the OS and ran into a problem. The main OSX startup menu (you know, where it asks for your location, timezone, personal info, etc) is prompting me for information, and I can't see the forms to fill them in! The external monitor defaults to "extended" as opposed to "mirrored", and the forms are embedded, meaning I can't drag them over to my external monitor. Obviously, if I can't fill out these forms and get to the desktop, the laptop is completely useless.
Does anyone know how to force the external monitor to be "mirrored" from startup? Is there a keycommand?
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Nov 6, 2008
I've received the responsibility of a Powerbook G3 Pismo from a friend, who got it from his friend. I managed to boot it up once, running just fine, but it suddenly froze, and now I can't get this poor machine to boot. I tried using the reset button in the back, and it makes a buzzing noise, like it's trying to boot, but then it stops.
The battery is completely dead, and it only makes the sound off AC power, if the press the rest button (the power button no longer seems to work). I tried opening the machine and pulling out the PRAM connection, like has been suggested elsewhere, but to no avail. Is there any way I can know if it's the hard drive, or the logic board, or the RAM? It just died on me, upon first booting and working so well. Now all I get is a little buzzing noise every time I press the rest button, which sounds like it's trying to start up.
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Nov 15, 2006
I am leaving for a week long trip and many parts of it will not be able to run the computer off of the powercord, which is a problem because I get about 40mins of wordprocessing use out of it when I run the battery alone. Can someone explain what the significance of these levels are for my Powerbook G4 15'' (Alm) 1.25GHz, namely the cycle count and full charge/remaining capacity?
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Jun 29, 2014
How can I transfer files to powerbook 540c
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Oct 15, 2008
My 12 inch powerbook does not start up. Instead it loads to Darwin. I have an install disk from a 15 inch powerbook G4 and I would like to know if using this would work on my 12 inch powerbook G4?
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Mar 25, 2012
MacBook Pro 15" (15-inch Core 2 Duo) late 2006 this apple macbook boot lion from usb or firewire ext hdd or usb stick which of 3 better must boot Lion on ext device? or none at all?
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Jun 11, 2012
I have a MacBook 4,1 with Intel Core 2 Duo processor 4GB Ram. It is taking over 10 minutes to boot up past the gray apple screen when I turn it on. First I cleared the PRam (?) then I checked the disk using Disk Utility Verify, and it said the disk needed repairs. So I ran the disk repair and it said it was unable to fix the errors on the HD.
I did a little research and tried booting into the Single User mode, then running /sbin/fsck -fy. It said that it found errors but could not fix them. I ran it two more times as suggested and got the same result each time. I then tried rebooting and now instead of taking 10 minutes to boot up, it takes about 5 minutes on the gray apple screen and then just turns off. I started in Verbose mode to try to troubleshoot the error and it appears the last thing to come across the screen before power down is a message "Apple Yukon 2: RxRingSize <= 1024....etc".
I decided next I would run the Apple Hardware Tester. The test came back with an error code "4SNS/1/40000001:IG0C-0.265". I am very good at searching the web but I could not find any errors that had the IG0C or IGOC or any combination at the end, but plenty of 4SNS/1/40000000(1) errors with different endings. From what I can tell people are saying anything with 4SNS/1/4000000 is a logic board failure, but this computer was literally just booting this morning until I did the /sbin/fsck -fy.
Info:
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.6)
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Oct 13, 2010
Is it possible to boot from an external Firewire DVD Drive? It certainly isnt from an external USB DVD. Real answers only please, not "I think so" ones based on HDDs or rumours you may have heard!...
Background:
I've got an MCE Optibay in my Mid-2010 i7 MBP. When installing Bootcamp it refuses to install from the external USB DVD drive. In the end I pulled the 2nd HDD out and reconnected the internal DVD. It then worked fine without a hitch. Then I reinstalled the 2nd HDD and all was fine for a few days.
Now I want to resize my Win7 partition (bigger, as MS Visual Studio's bigger than I thought, and I might stick some games on). I can shrink the OSX partition fine with Disk Utility, but windows won't grow the Win7 one because the empty space is before the Win7 partition, not after it. Apparently this can be done with GParted. Guess what? I can't boot the Linux based GParted CDROM from the external USB DVD drive! So, will a Firewire one work where USB fails, and solve my alternative OS booting issues? If I buy one I can then either use GParted, or delete the Win7 partition and start again without having to pull the laptop to bits all over again, only to put it back once I'm done, and possibly have the same issues in the future. Obviously I don't want to blow extra money getting a Firewire DVD drive though if it's a waste of money...
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Mar 28, 2010
I run SSD/HDD, my HDD in the optibay is broken, I stuck it in a external and it makes finder freeze, it got bumped around too much so I want to put a new one back in the 'correct place' for a spinner, and stick the SSD in the optibay.(I figure the extra 2% of shock protection offered by the orange rubber circle things is worth the trouble of moving everything).
I am also going to buy a WD 3 platter 1TB laptop drive, and I read that they fit fine in the regular spot in MBP's (I'm going to open and measure in a min.)Anyways, there's no BIOS, only EFI, so how to I pick what drive to boot from? with 10.6 is it as simple as holding option down on boot, and picking my 'OSX' HDD, and then it will auto boot from that until I specify otherwise? (I ask because before 10.6 people on here were always talking about how to switch boot drives.)
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May 13, 2010
Just an FYI. Tech Support at Allsoft states The Disk Warrior 4.2 Boot DVD will not Boot the new 2010 MBP's. They are waiting for information (software) from Apple.
Will need to use Target Mode or another Mac connected with Firewire till then. Boot from that then run DW from your MBP.
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