PowerPC :: PowerBook G4 Cannot Booting - Hard Drive Failure?
Nov 25, 2009
I'm a new Mac user for about 6 months now. I bought a used PowerBook G4 15" 1.25 ghz notebook that was in good condition. It was well cared for by the previous owner. Only thing she had done was update the ram to 2 gigs.Recently I began to notice it running slower, programs were freezing and Garage Band couldn't run as many tracks. I installed recommended software updates before it started to get slower and I thought maybe that was the problem.So I attempted to do a fresh swipe of the hard drive and start from nothing. I saved some files and then tried to run the software installation cd. It didn't really help at all. I can't remember the error but it wouldn't let me reinstall OS X even when I held "c" when starting up. At one point I must have clicked run in target mode because I booted it up and it showed an unfamiliar screen. Then I restarted it once again and saw on Disk Utility that S.M.A.R.T. said something about hard drive failure.
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Jan 24, 2010
Here's the rundown: my uncle gave me a pristine Powerbook G4 Titanium edition. Good computer, 15.5" screen, definitely worth keeping. He wiped the thing clean before giving it to me. The problem is the internal CD drive is super flaky and won't take an bootable CD well. It took my Tiger bootable once or twice and bonked out during the installation. Now, I can't get anything. BUT, I have a nice external firewire 400 CD/DVD drive. I hit option and can see the disc, but the PB won't take it. Also, of course I hit C on startup to try and load from the CD. Hasn't taken since the first few tries.
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Sep 15, 2006
I was using my mom's 500 mhz G3 iBook circa 2k1, running 10.2.0 and it decided to start tweaking out on me. Being a somewhat aware computer person, I thought tat a simple restart would fix all of this. Shows you how much I know. Anyway, the boot-up screen showed the icon of the file with the question mark inside. Find the OS 9 CD that we have and I booted up through the CD. I finish starting up and, to my surprise, the drive appears to be erased- the computer asks me if I want to initialize the disk. I hit cancel and proceed to run the disk repair on the OS 9 CD. After it's done scanning, the the results are: "Missing Thread Record, 62078, 4260". What does it all mean? Will the computer be able to recover? What fate lies in store for the iBook?
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Jan 15, 2008
I was just wondering if anyone could help me with this. the iBook that I just inherited from my aunt, (She got a new MB) was working yesterday, whenever the power shut-off on it. (It has a power issue on the logic board, and if it comes unplugged it dies, even though it has a new battery.) so she went to work, and attempted to power it on, it came up, and the apple was on the screen, and the spinner came up, nad it spun for a very long time, eventually the screen flashed, and turned blue, and the spinner came again. After around 15 minutes, she was given the kernal panic screen. She held down the power button, and restarted, only to come up with the old finder face, and a question mark. I rush over with my disc's, and load up the disk utility. It was repairing the disk, and about 3/4 of the way through, it had an error. So, I rebooted, and we got an apple, and it repeated the previous situation, and gave the blue screen, followed by a kernel panic. This time I ran the hardware test, and it says that the logic board passed, but there was an issued with the harddrive.
At first disk utility could find the hard drive, and it reported it as being a 2 TB drive!!!!!!! So I got suspicous about that, and after the hardware test, the computer was reporting that there was no hard drive in the computer at all. we know for a fact that the drive was either 50, or 80Gb's, (90% sure 80) My question to you is: Is this the hard drive that has gone bad, or, is it the controller on the logicboard needing to be replaced?
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Apr 11, 2010
My newly acquired "ibook G4 1.33ghz 12 inch" is having problems booting just after recently insatlling a brand new WD Scorpio Blue 160GB hard-drive. I installed myself with the very useful [URL] tutorial which ran through the process quite simply. Basically the background story here is, I was given the ibook by a friend of mine who didn't want it as she didn't have the patience, money and time to invest into having it fixed. Some three years ago she dropped it from her coffee table and since then the hard-drive started failing, getting louder and slower to eventually one day not switching on at all. She took the ibook to an Apple Genius bar in LA where they ran diagnostics and resulted it with having a failed hard-drive.
She never had it repaired and has since been keeping it stored away as a spare. She was kind enough to gift it to me, I was well up for the challenge to repair it so here I am!! So, I bought a new hard-drive, successfully installed it and then the moment of truth, the ibook DID switch on, this itself was good news. But ever since I haven't been able to progress any further, as when I switch the ibook on it makes the apple start-up sound then goes to a white screen and says this:
Invalid memory access at SRR0: ff8486a4 SRR1: 00003030
Apple PowerBook6, 7 4.9.3f0 BootROM built on 07/05/05 at 11:14:11
Copyright etc.
Then says:
To continue booting, type "mac-boot" and press return
To shut down, type "shut-down" and press return
Reducing system power
So if I type "mac-boot" it goes to a grey screen with a folder icon in the middle containing a little 'finder' face and a flashing question mark, and then if left for about 5 minutes or so it just switches itself off. Of course it occurred to me that there is nothing on the new hard-drive so it can't boot from anything, I tried using my intel mac's start up disk which has OSX tiger on it, but this doesn't give any better results, I start-up holding C and I here the disk being read but it can't boot from it, it still goes back to the OpenFirmware screen as above.
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Oct 3, 2006
I have an older 15" G4 Powerbook (before the recalled Powerbooks with the RAM slot failures) that has recently been experiencing some speed issues. To my dismay, when I checked my 'About This Mac...' I no longer had 1GB of RAM, only a lowly 512 MB. Tonight I sat down and started swapping and removing my two sticks of RAM and as it turns out, something is up.
With a 512 stick in the lower slot, System Profiler tells me I have 512 MB of RAM and that the upper slot is empty. When I put the other stick in the upper slot (leaving the lower one in), System Profiler now says I have 512 MB of RAM and that the lower slot is empty. Does this look to be a (out of warranty) logic board failure? Is there anything else I can try to do? On a related note, when removing the screws from the RAM panel on the bottom of my PB, one screw fell into my Powerbook, never to be seen again. Is this going to cause any problems down the line?
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Apr 28, 2009
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My Intel MacBook is in the shop, and I swapped out my hard drive before I sent it in and put it in a USB enclosure. I was able to boot my friend's MacBook Pro from the drive, but my G4 Mac Mini is not seeing it as an option (upon startup or otherwise). I can read files from it, but I really need to boot from the drive for some other things (cookies, passwords, and especially the ability to sync my iPod touch).
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Apr 8, 2010
I want to put my old 15" PowerBook hard drive into an external case. I pulled the hard drive out of the PowerBook. And I purchased a NexStar CS 2.5" SATA to USB 2.0 external case. But the connections don't match. What do I need to do? Do I need to buy some sort of adaptor? Hard drive is a Hitachi 120GB 5400RPM (model # HTS541612J9AT00) 2.5" Sorry, these photos are blurry as hell. Picture of hard drive pins:
Pins are in the following configuration (1's represent pins):...............
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Dec 26, 2006
I have trided to upgrade the hard drive on my G4 15" powerbook. The ribon conector from the drive to the board has come free from the board and I don't know how to refasten it.
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Jun 1, 2009
my powerbook g4 titanium hard drive was makin weird noise and then it died and I can't get into operating system. now when I power on my laptop it only shows now a square with a smile face and a question mark. if I buy a new hard drive on ebay how do I install the OS on the hard drive? is it hard? will I be able to install it by myself? is there a website with the steps how to install the OS?
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Sep 18, 2009
A few months ago it was dropped and would not boot past the Apple screen. I presumed it was faulty from the fall and instead of repairing it I figured I would just buy a new computer.
Anyway I have just purchased a new MBP 13" and I'm trying to get everything off my old laptop. It is going into target disk mode but the MBP isn't picking it up.
It is finding it in the disk utility but its just showing the beachball. To make matters worse I can't boot from a CD as the Superdrive is just chucking out CD's (guessing its bent from the fall).
Guessing its dead and Im going to have to try and get it data recovered, just seeing if there are any other ideas?
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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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Mar 26, 2007
A while back I bought an external hard drive for my PC, but then ditched the PC and decided to hook up the hard drive to my Mac. My External Hard Drive is a: 149.1 GB WDC WD 16 00JB-00GVA0 The problem is, I can access all the information but it will not let me do anything on the external harddrive (Like creating a file, copying and pasting a file on there, etc.) However, I can save Torrent downloads on the harddrive, but they do not show up on the actual external hard drive. But, when I press the "Find/Show directory" button in Bittorrent it does find the files. Is there something I need to do, Or is it just incompatible with my Mac?
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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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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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Nov 24, 2008
Hi I have a problem with my PowerBook
It boots to BSD (Command Line Interface) instead of OS X (GUI Aqua)
This Video shows more
[URL]
Please note that the screen on the PowerBook is broke so I can only use it connected to an external monitor
When I try to reinstall the system, the picture does not get pushed across to the external monitor meaning I can not see what I am doing and thus can not reinstall
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Dec 5, 2008
I'm having a problem with my Powerbook G4. I kind of screwed up my drivers because I was an idiot and tried to get some Intel drivers to work on the computer through some cheat thing and now my computer won't boot up. I have an install disk but when I try to reinstall it keeps saying that I need Mac OSX Install Disk 2. I never had to use disk 2 before and I never had one to begin with.
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Mar 28, 2009
I know very very little about computer parts and things like that, but I hope to have provided enough information. When I boot up, both plugged into the power cord, and on battery, the powerbook will reach a white screen with an apple logo in the center. There also is a rotating disk below the apple logo. It will then shortly power down. I made a visit to the genius bar, and they told me something was wrong. I was like DUH!!! They said for $320 it would all be fixed, but I was hoping to be able to find out what was going wrong with it. Sadly I don't have the start-up disk that came with the laptop .
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Jul 2, 2010
I am trying to do a clean install of OSX 10.5 on my old powerbook G4 15". I am using a 10.5 image file on my external. I partitioned the external using GUID, and restored the image file onto the external. (this method works when installing on intel macs). Unfortunately, I cannot boot 10.5 using this method on my powerbook. Is it because i am using a firewire 800 cable? Should I be booting it using a firewire 400? I know that PPC macs cannot boot using usb, so i am stumped.
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Dec 2, 2006
during startup, my powerbook will shutdown during the gray screen I've tried booting from an external drive. It goes to a gray screen without an apple logo.I've tried putting it in Target disk mode (to get my files off). But it won't mount on my desktop.Also tried resseting the pram as apple's troubleshooting suggested. nothing differen
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Mar 20, 2008
I've got a Powerbook G4 that has a booting issue. I will hear the startup "dong" a whirl of the drive, then it doesn't go to the grey screen with the Apple. It just sits there with a black screen.If I wait a few hours and try it, sometimes it starts up fine, or sometimes it will sit on the grey screen with the Apple symbol and do nothing.If it does boot correctly, none of the USB ports work. Any ideas on if its worth trying to repair since its 2 and a half years old and I didn't get the Apple Extended Service plan?
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May 23, 2009
Here is the situation. I have a 12 in Powerbook G4 with OS X. About a week ago I downloaded a security update and once it was downloaded it asked to either restart or shut down the computer. I clicked restart. It shut down and then turned back on but only got to the Apple symbol with the small grey spinning wheel beneath and wouldn't finish booting up past that. I tried turning it on while holding down the option button and it went to the hard disk screen and clicked the right arrow but it still didn't get past that screen.
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Jan 26, 2007
My G4 powerbook has been saying recently that the start up disk is full, so i tried to empty some stuff off it. But not long after this when i tried booting it up the normal happens at first ie the t'ing' start up sound and the apple sign with the little timer going round but it does nothing else, it just carries on going round. I have tried re setting it and looked on help sites like this to try and override it etc but nothing seems to work!
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Sep 17, 2007
My powerbook doesn't always make the tadah sound when booting up, why is that?
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Jun 29, 2009
I recently purchased a sort of beat up 1.5GHz 12" PowerBook G4, top of the line, and it arrived today. It boots up normally when the apple appears, then it shows the blue screen and then the mouse turns into a spinning wheel. Also, when I move the cursor, a second cursor from the same spot stays in the top-left corner. The PowerBook will only work normally as a headless server (powers on, lid closed), unless booted in safe mode. Another issue is the screen. The seller said there were lines going up and down the screen, but it varies depending on what is displayed on the screen. If the screen is grey or in target-disk mode, they do not appear, but on the 10.5 standard desktop pic, it changes pattern. The lines can be seen here: [URL]
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Jul 5, 2006
Well, the hdd in my powerbook has finally died. Won't be recognized in disk utility, and when it was, it wouldn't repair or even verify. I kept getting the invalid node structure error. My AppleCare subscription has also expired about 2 months ago.
So, I went online and found the following web site about opening up the Powerbook 15" (Aluminum) and how to go about replacing things in it:[URL]
Then, I went to tiger direct and found this hard drive to put in it:[URL]
What do you guys think? Is it really worth it?
What hard drive do you recommend I use?
Is this better than going and getting it done?
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Mar 12, 2010
We have i-Mac 20" with built in i-sight Power PC, one of last ones I think before the intel. We have had a few problems before with it powering down and going to sleep. Used to hoover dust out and that seemed to fix it.
Now it won't start at all. I have tried all the PRAM and various commands to re set various things but none of these work. We had a wireless keyboard and I have just tried a wired one but I do not think either are connecting as the tab key light does not come on, which it does when I tested the wired on on my lap top.
When it died it crashed with a cd in drive. I have removed this and replaced it with the mac install disk to try and run the disk check but the optical drive is not starting at all either.
All that happens on start up is the sleep light comes on, then after a few moments fan starts to whirl. I can't hear the hard drive - have tried to rock hard drive to get it to spin but nothing.
Just wondering whether worth trying to replace optical drive or is this being controlled by hard drive - hence its not working nor hard drive. is there any way to recover data if it is the hard drive that is dead? anything else I can try and replace to fix it? could I use an external optical drive connected via USB to start?
I have tried to firewire but not joy their either!
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Jun 12, 2010
Just experienced a hard drive failure right now on my MacBook (2007). Everything had froze and I shut it down. When I started it again, the screen was dimmed and the Apple jingle went on a louder sound then before. Is this a sure sign of a MacBook hard drive failure or would it be related to something else, for example, the logic board?
Also, what should I do now? Last full backup was 3 weeks ago and I had worked on lots of things between that period of time and now.
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