My powerbook was working fine but i shut i down over night and when i turned it on the next morning it refused to boot. All i got was a grey screen with the folder icon which flash between a question mark and the finder icon.
View 8 RepliesLate last night, I ran into some problems with my iBook G3. It's the 700 Mhz model, with 384MB of RAM. Nothing else special in terms of hardware config (unless an Airport card is special). OS X 10.2.8.
Basically, the computer seemed to hang and I did a hard reboot, and upon starting up I got a folder with a flashing ? .
I can't seem to find my Install disc 1 to run Disk Utility or just boot up - hopefully I will find that when I go home tonight (or maybe I left it at my parent's place), but I checked using the Hardware Test CD and it didn't detect any problems.
I am having problems opening the CD drive, so I've had to open it using a paperclip. Sometimes it doesn't appear to be using the CD.
I also have run the Micromat test CD that came with Applecare (of course this machine is almost 4 years old so that's finished...) and it detected a problem with the Read Buffer last night, but then I guess the battery ran out while it was on the last test.
This morning, I ran the Read Buffer, Write Buffer, and Volume structure tests and the first two passed very fast (unlike last night), but the Volume Structure test failed. I'm not surprised since I've been aware I have issues with this before. I tried to repair before going to work but at one point it seemed to hang so I gave it another hard reboot.
Last night, I would sometimes get the apple logo with the spinning "clock", and sometimes I would get the ? but it would never get to the login screen.
so I have a very unique, bizarre problem. A friend brought her G4 1.67gHz 15" Powerbook to the office to have it looked at as it wasn't working properly. I took a look at it and found that one of the RAM chips was shorted out. I took it out and ordered her a new pair (since it was like $26 for 2gb, and with the one removed she was running on 512). Here's where it gets bizarre: I installed the new RAM and it was freezing regularly. I then took one out and it was still freezing regularly. I booted it from my Utilities partition (I have a bootable firewire drive set up to fix problems and recover data) and ran Disk Warrior, TechTool, and a whole heapin helpin of other fixin and optimization apps. I got it to fix all the reported errors, TechTool reports no hardware errors, everything should work perfectly. So now, the laptop boots to a blue screen. I can't boot it from a retail Tiger install disc, and I can't boot it from the hard drive, it just boots to the Apple logo, the Unix spinner, and then goes blue and freezes. So I set it as a firewire target drive and was able to do an archive/install of Tiger using my G5. It recognized and installed fine and it booted my G5. Ok, so it's not the drive. I restart and nothing, apple/unix logos then blue screen. Same with the Tiger DVD. I replace the original 512MB stick (the working one) and still same result. So finally I go back to my Firewire repairs disc and everything boots fine, all tests come out fine, drive is recognized and works fine, etc. What could cause a computer to boot, a drive to be bootable, but a computer not being able to boot on any installed drive?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI 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.
View 11 Replies View RelatedSo 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.
well where do i begin ?? basicly i purchased a ibook g4 14" 1.33ghz that had its harddrive upgraded by a apple service provider. About two weeks after this upgrade took place the harddrive started playing up and the machine would not see the boot volume on the drive when restarted or every now and then the machine would freeze after some time of use, a few hours maybe. i ran apple hardware test and it came back clean after zapping the pram and disk warrioring the drive it fixed this for a day then it started again oh well.
so i sent it back to the service provider who said yep its the hadrdrive goody !!! oh NO he calls back the next day and says the new harddrive is not reconized and that they tried a new ribbon cable WTF when i sent it in the machine saw the harddrive via target disk mode all the time it just didnt see the boot volume.
NOW his saying its the logicboard **** sake !!! so my question could this machines logicboard be fried when it was fine before i sent it in , i mean the ide controller was fine i checked it and now im faced with a brick !!!what do i do ????
Yesterday my screen (30" Apple Cinema) started showing symptoms of graphics card failure, jagged lines across the screen. I rebooted my Mac Pro and it was gone. Then it happened again an hour later, this time the machine didn't boot, I get the Apple logo, and then it hangs up and the screen is shifted to left (I get apple logo on left side of the monitor instead of the middle) and jagged lines all over.
So the first thing I tested was using Target Disk Mode, it works. I can access my Mac Pro's internal HD's by TDM from my MacBook Pro. Then I tested single user mode, it does boot, I can't read what's written since the screen is shifted to left, but if I type (without seeing) reboot and hit enter, it reboots. So I assume the single user mode is working.
What else can I try to 100% make sure it's my graphics card that failed and everything else is ok with Mac Pro? I already ordered a graphics card replacement but I wouldn't like to be surprised if the Mac Pro still doesn't boot when the card arrives. It won't boot from Apple Startup DVD either. Same thing happens, gray logo then kernel panic with jagged lines all across the shifted screen.
I have an iBook G4 1.07 GHz 30 gb 256 RAM with Panther. It was working fine until my HD got close to being full. Now I can't get it to boot past the Apple screen. It will either freeze there, or move on to the blue screen and freeze before the progress bar enters. I want to re-install Panther but I can't get any CD to boot during startup by holding "C", including the Panther OS CD, the Hardware Test CD, or the Tech Tool CD. I am able to boot to single user mode, where I type fsck -fy, and I recieve no errors with the hardware. I had this issue beore and my HD had to be replaced by Apple.
View 6 Replies View RelatedSo I installed osx 10.4 server on a Power Mac G4 (white/blue)
Went throught the setup screens and did a complete reformat / install.
Just boots to the loader screen. (Where the mac face shows, followed by a question mark) and just cycles over and over.
I can put the DVD in at this point and restart the install.. I did go in and check the disk permissions and disk status and both passed.
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.
In my attempt to install Windows XP via Boot Camp, I accidentally inserted an SP1 disc instead of the SP2 disc that I have. The installation proceeded to the point where it does for most who attempt this: the screen where you are prompted to press ENTER. I could not proceed and therefore restarted the iMac and held down the mouse button upon start-up to remove the CD.
HERE IS THE PROBLEM:I can not boot into OS X because the keyboard shortcuts (those that might allow me to select which partition to boot from and/or reset PRAM) seem to be disabled. Instead, a reboot always ends at a black screen with a blinking DOS-esque cursor, or the prompt: "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key."
I have attempted inserting my SP2 disc at this point, to no avail. My keyboard seems to be disabled, as if the SP1 install proceeded just enough to establish itself as the boot drive without drivers for the keyboard. I've tried using all 3 USB ports, disconnecting other USB devices. Oddly, my bluetooth mouse works to eject the CD on reboot...
I can't get OSX to boot on the G3 when I reboot with the C button down it won't do anything no apple logo or anything. It's 10.4 and the cd version What am I doing wrong?
View 1 Replies View RelatedMy Powerbook g4 al 1GHZ won't boot up. I press the power button it chimes, i can hear the hardrive and fans spinning but the screen is black.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI'm having an odd problem that I can't figure out. I have a fairly new iMac (the aluminum one). It originally had Tiger on it, then Leopard came out 1 week later. I upgraded to Leopard once it came out. I then purchased the Snow Leopard upgrade, and upgraded my iMac to SL.
I've been running SL great on it for several weeks now (since SL was released). I haven't had any issues, except with Time Machine. I wanted to do a verify/repair disk on the HD, so I attempted to boot my iMac from DVD.
It did not boot automatically to DVD, so I attempted a "C" during startup to boot from my DVD. After about 5-10 mins of waiting, it dropped me into "Safe Boot". I can not seem to boot it from the DVD.
I rebooted my iMac, and double clicked the install icon from the DVD. It's giving me the following error:
"Mac OS X 10.6 cannot be installed on this machine"
It's claiming that I need v10.5 or higher to install. I'm currently at 10.6.1, so I'm not sure what it's complaining about.
Has anyone had or seen this issue before? All I'm trying to do, is perform a repair disk on my HD...but I can't even boot from my DVD anymore.
I'm trying to install Damn Small Linux on iMac G3,64MB ram and 333Mhz processor. The problem is that i'm not able to boot the cd. Under windows machine...it boot normally,but if i put it on G3 and hold 'C',it doesn't boot (but i think it try to read the cd becouse i see a small icon with "face"/"?" on the screen).
View 15 Replies View RelatedMy PowerBook G4 1.5Ghz won't boot up. It happened about a year ago when I first got my new MBP so I just let it sit. But I'd like to give it to a friend if I can get it to work. I've tried resetting the PMU by holding shift+control+option+power... waiting 5 seconds and powering on, but nothing happens. The battery appears to be functioning correctly. When the cable is in it lights up like normal and the battery indicators light up and are in full charge. I've taken the ram out and put it back in. Any other clues what I could try before bringing it in to Apple?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a usb thumb drive can I boot leopard from a usb?
View 2 Replies View RelatedMy trusty ol' powerbook might have finally met its match. I can not get it to boot into any mode. I've tried booting to the original discs ('C' while starting up); safe mode, single user mode, etc. I've reset the PMRAM (or whatever it's called) It seems perma stuck at the blue screen.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI opened up Garageband, went into preferences to configure the audio for my peripheral audio device, and the computer and curser locked up, so I had to shut it down by pressing the power button for 4 seconds. I restarted the G4 and it would only boot up to a blue screen with the pointer curser, but would not finish loading anything on the desktop, no icons, no menu, nothing. I tried restarting repeatedly this way, but got the same result each time.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI was playing some old freeware games for Mac OS 9 and was playing lemmings when my Clamshell iBook just turned off and now I get the Blinking folder with question mark. I made a live CD of ubuntu where it's talking to the harddrive but the iBook won't boot to OS X so i am trying to figure why.
View 10 Replies View RelatedMy powerbook G4 keeps freezing whenever I try to start it - as limited as my Mac vocabulary is, the "spinny thing" that goes by during the "gray boot screen" with that there "Apple logo" stops and the entire process is frozen. Paper season is started here at school - and I hate click-clacking on the cheapo Dells in the computer lab.
View 14 Replies View RelatedMy friend just got a 800 Mhz iBook G3 from someone. I think it's the April 2003 model. It has a CD-ROM drive so I think it's that one. The iBook has Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger on it. The problem is that in normal boot, it hangs right before the "Starting Mac OS X" screen with the bar. The mouse pointer just stays in the corner. The computer can boot into Safe Boot. He tried reinstalling the OS with Archive And Install keeping the same settings but it still does it. Apparently he says that he had to boot into the Mac OS X Install Disc in safe mode by holding shift. Starting the computer holding Option and selecting the Install Disc caused the installer caused it to hang in the same way. He is currently doing another Archive And Install with the keep settings box unchecked and has yet to do an Erase And Install.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have a G4 PowerMac that will not boot up. I power up the computer and it stalls on a grey screen with text prompting me to type <<boot>> if you wish to continue...or something like that. Does anyone have any advice on how I might troubleshoot this? The computer was working fine for a few days before this occured. It has been unused and sitting is storage for a while.
View 2 Replies View Relatedmy powerbook was playing up yesterday and i had to power off via the switch and now it wont boot, All i get is a grey screen no apple logo and no spinning dial, in stead i get a picture of a happy mac face and then a question mark and sometime not even that.
View 5 Replies View RelatedAssuming it's the HDD, which I already got a replacement. Can I take out the HDD and install it in an enclosure and run some sort of recovery software? I had alot of personal stuff as well as my portfolio work in there
View 2 Replies View RelatedA while ago, I got hold of an old Power Mac G4 (450MHz, 128MB RAM, OS X10.3) which I haven't dug out until now. As it contains the old owner's data, I thought the best thing to do would be to do a clean install of Tiger. I bought a Tiger DVD set and upgraded the RAM to 1GB but the DVD won't boot. The DVD is mounted in OS X and I can access the launch screen which has a button to restart and upon restarting, OS X just boots again.
I have tried pushing C and Alt (I have a Microsoft Bluetooth keyboard as the Apple one has been misplaced - Could this be the problem?) but nothing appears on the the display for a while, then OS X boots. I have also tried setting the Startup Disk to the Install DVD which doesn't work either. I was also thinking it could be the DVD-ROM drive as the button to eject is in the center whereas the drive's eject button is on the right (so I am guessing it isn't an original part)
Basically, I have a 12" 1.33ghz powerbook that's progressively gotten worse over time. The problem started occasionally with the clock drifting and the computer freezing after waking from its sleep. After booting, everything would be fine again and the problem wouldn't happen for a couple weeks or a month. But then it got worse, where it would freeze but wouldn't boot after the first try. This went on for a few weeks, where now it won't even boot anymore. What I get is the boot chime followed by the grey screen without the apple icon. I can still use the reboot key commands, but that's it. Has anyone had a similar problems, know what might be happening or have an idea of how to fix it?
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have an old 450mhz powermac g4 and about a billion old sticks of pc133 (and some pc100) ram.
So I have 3 128mb PC133 memory sticks, and when i put each in the powermac individually (as the only mem stick in the computer), they work fine.
However, if i put any more than one stick in the computer, it will turn on but not boot up or display anything.
I just upgraded my PowerBook G4 1.33 from the orig Combo D to a Panasonic SuperDrive [URL].
The drive works fine except I can no longer boot from it. Holding the "c" key, "Option Key" nothing works.
Recently I got a broken G4 cube. I am trying to figure out what the problem is. The previous owner cut the original IDE-cable. So I replaced it with just a standard IDE-cable. Maybe that's the problem, I am not sure. Everything is connected like it should be, power is on, but it doesn't boot. This is what happens. The moment I connect the power supply, it starts booting, I hear the superdrive spin up for half a second, after that it will go dead again. This repeats itself about a 1000 times. The cinema display is connect through ADC, but doesn't do one thing!
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