Can't do "Archive and Install" on my Powerbook G4, no hard drive appears on list.

I can't select the hard drive to reinstall OS X. (10.2.3) When I do information on DISK UTILITIES it says the MacIntosh HD (volume name) is "not mounted". Have tried selecting the Mount command but it doesn't do anything.

Any ideas?

Will Disk Warrior solve this? (I'll order it today if someone knows).

disk order will not 'repair' a problem with your hd. I recommend getting carbon copy cloner and backing up to an external hd or something ASAP. have you noticed problems recently? is your hd dieing? if it doesnt show up in disk utility, theres most likely a big problem.

I ran disk utilities to do a disk repair. At that time, the drive name appeared in the left hand box, and underneath, the volume name (but it was greyed out). I could still select it and it did the repair. It told me I had an "invalid key length" but the repair was complete. I rebooted but had the same problem (slow to get to progress bar, then hanging up at "waiting for application services". I then did the "fsck" function, and it gave me the same result "invalid key length" but added "4, 2095". I then ran the hardware test disk and it said everything was fine, hardware wise. Prior to that, I also ran the procedure outlined elsewhere in here to reset the PRAM. That accomplished nothing that I could tell.

I then decided to run the "Archive and Install", followed the procedure exactly as outlined by Apple at their support site, and when it came time to select the disk for installation (step 4, I believe), no list appeared. I then opened disk utilities again, and the left hand box with the list of drives (both the hard drive and the optical drive had appeared previously) was not present. I then shut everything down and posted the above.

I hadn't noticed any problems until Sunday morning. My wife says the laptop hung up the previous night (I was out) and there was no special error message. She did a forced shutdown (holding down the power button for several seconds) and closed the lid/screen, but it didn't close completely. A month ago, the laptop was dropped to the floor (my mother became entangled in the modem line and fell, causing the laptop to fall on the floor--the casing is a bit cracked, but everything else seemed to work fine--however, since then, closing the lid requires more pressure than before). Now, I was unaware of the UNIX 3am - 5am maintenance issue (the one MacJanitor, among others, is supposed to address) until I came to this site looking for help with my startup problem. I don't know if the lack of running such maintenance could have caused this problem (I always shut my machine off at night). I really don't know what else to try.

Just re-ran Hardware Test disk. Says there are no hardware problems. Was unable to get OS X installation disk to load, however. It hung up on the barber pole. I'm trying it one more time, but after that, I guess I'll have to pony up some cash and go to a repair shop. Unless someone out there has a miracle solution to offer me.

if its not showing up as a disk you can install on, theres most likely, %99 sure, a hard drive problem. back it all up.if you have an extra hard drive, try connecting it. and see if you can use that.

I just re-ran the install disk. It loaded correctly this time. In the left hand box in Disk Utilities, it shows (first two lines preceded by HD icon, second two by Optical Disk icon)
37.26 GB TOSHIBA
MacIntosh HD
3.65 GB
PowerBook G4

Lines 1, 3 and 4 are black print, line two is greyed out. When I select the greyed out MacIntosh HD, in the Information Tab, I get the following

Bigger HD icon

Mount Point: Not Mounted
Format: HFS+
Capacity: 37.26 GB (40,007,283,712 bytes)

In the command bar across the top of the screen, under Options, I see MOUNT (command M), UNMOUNT (command U--greyed out) and EJECT (command E). I have selected MOUNT (both via mouse pointer and by keyboard) and a faint, little whirring sound emanates briefly (sometimes accompanied by spinning colour wheel icon), but nothing else happens. It is not Mounting the volume. Could this be what the "invalid key length" error is doing, preventing the computer from recognizing the volume name?

I have no extra hard drive, nor have I been diligent in making backups (I have some recent stuff on there that I'd rather not lose).