Need help w/ a dead iBook ...

I'm sad to report that 3.5+ year old 12" 1.2 Ghz. G4 iBook is in rough shape. ;-(

Last night it completely froze so I rebooted it. When it started back up it showed these things in succession ...c-main

1. A flashing picture of a globe (earth) for maybe 20+ seconds
2. A picture of the system folder with I think a question mark in it (this scares me)
3. The full gray screen with the large darker gray Apple logo in the center of the screen (small spinning pinwheel near the bottom of the screen) for as much as a couple minutes
4. A bright blue screen, sometimes showing the mouse pointer

This last screen just stays there indefinitely, I've waited as long as 20 minutes. I've rebooted several times with the same results.

The machine had Tiger on it. I found what I think was the Tiger DVD and attempted to boot from it, but I got the same results as above. I may try my Panther discs if I can find them. I do think I hear the HD spinning at times.

Any ideas? Does it sound like the HD might have finally just died? It was the factory 80GB 4800rpm drive. If I replace it I would like to get one that spins faster, it's plugged in the vast majority of the time anyway.

All advice and pointers to info much appreciated, thanks very much in advance!!

It sounds like it is two things to me:
Either your computer has a kernel panic
OR
Yes, your hard drive is finally on the way out. My emac was doing what you are talking about problem-wise for a period of time, but I replaced the hard drive and all was well.

If only the hard drive failed then you should be able to boot from the disc though.

Thanks, guys. I was able to boot from the DVD last night and run Disk utility. The HD is being reported as failed.

Is this an appropriate drive for a G4 iBook (it's ATA)? I think the newer MacBooks use SATA?
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western Digital/WD800BEVE/

Thanks!

Glenners said:

If only the hard drive failed then you should be able to boot from the disc though.

Click to expand...

True...Perhaps the logic board cut out on you.

According to everymac.com, your ibook uses ata/100 drives, so the hard drive you have in your link should work.

Good Luck

speedmaster said:

Thanks, guys. I was able to boot from the DVD last night and run Disk utility. The HD is being reported as failed.

Is this an appropriate drive for a G4 iBook (it's ATA)? I think the newer MacBooks use SATA?
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western Digital/WD800BEVE/

Thanks!

Click to expand...

That will work fine.