04-14-2009, 05:57 PM

On normal start up, I get the "You need to restart your computer......" message with start symbol behind the writing. every time I try to restart the same thing happens. I've tried all the keys on start up tricks and the only ones that work are option/startup where I can choose Hard Drive, OS Disc, or Hardware tools. If I choose Hard Drive, it goes back to the kernal panic screen with "you need to .....". If I choose OS Disc, it goes to a light gray screen with the apple symbol in the middle and just stays there (also does this if I try to startup holding C with startup disc). If I choose Hardware Tools, it lets me test the hard drive and everything checks out fine but when I restart back to the "You need to restart.....". It will also startup in target disc mode hooked up to my iMac. All of my apps and files were there so I transfered everything, whew! I can then insert the startup disc into the PB and it comes up on my iMac in target disc mode. I then try to open and reinstall OS 10.4 but it tells me I have to restart to start the process and I can't do this in target disc mode. I just ant to be able to erase everything on my PB and reinstall OS 10.4 with the PB start discs. Is this possible? thanks....
J.R.

04-25-2009, 06:41 AM

well I replaced my hard drive and it now shows up in Disc Utility when I run my PB in target disc mode. I reinstalled OS 10.4 on my PB through target disc mode on my iMac. Now the PB will either try to start up but gets stuck when opening Mac OS X (sometimes gets to the screen where the bar is filling up and then everything goes blue with spinning beach ball then ball stops spinning and is frozen) and other times PB starts up and directly goes to the "You need to restart your computer...." screen. So I guess replacing the hard drive was not my fix. I ran Apple Hardware Test on the PB and everything came out fine (including logic board). WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?

04-25-2009, 01:12 PM

Try removing, swapping and reseating the RAM. You may need to replace the RAM if it's found to have failed - but the hardware check should have shown that.

If you have the original install (restore) disk that came with the PB, or a full retail version of Tiger on dvd, you should use that to test the hardware.

Third suggestion is to get that PB to a Mac tech.