newbie: stuck on desktop screen after booting

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Dear all,

after booting, my Powerbook is stuck on the desktop screen.

I am new to Macs; bought a PB G4 with preinstalled Tiger a month ago. Yesterday I noticed that Camino was hanging so I pressed the ON button forcing the machine to shut down.

Here's where the problem starts. As I tried to turn it on, the machine got stuck on desktop screen.

I've already gone through the sticky post with "instant fixes" to no avail. I booted in single-user mode and attempted to use fsck -y to which I got a "Volume is journaled. No checking performed". I tried then a forced fsck and this is exactly what I got back:

** /dev/rdisk0s3
** Root file system
** Checking HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
disk0s3: I/O error.
Invalid sibling link
(4, 16973)
** Volume check failed.


Please help! To make matters worse I bought this from a guy that misplaced the original OS disk. Thinking I would never need it I agreed. Oh, and by the way, I am currently posted in India, so no Mac support readily available (me thinks).

Thanks for your help.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
933 Mhz Powermac Quicksilver,1.5GB RAM, OSX 10.5, Tangerine 300MHz Clamshell, OS 9.2
Your hard drive directory is damaged beyond Disk Utility's limited repair capabilities (which are, as far as I know, the same as those of fsck). You can either reformat the drive and reinstall everything, which sounds like a non-option for you right now, or buy DiskWarrior and rebuild the drive's directory with it, or buy a new hard drive and set the old one aside to be repaired later. But if you'd also have to buy an OS to install on a new drive, DiskWarrior would be less expensive than a drive plus an OS.

It's possible that the drive's directory is scrambled because the drive is failing, and in that case it will soon scramble itself again even if you fix it now. Start it up from your Apple Hardware Test disc and run the extended test to make sure you don't have a RAM or hard drive hardware problem. If that all passes OK, start up again from your original OS installer disc and see what Disk Utility reports for the drive's SMART status. Report back with results
 
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Thank you for your response. Just to keep you on the loop, I have not been able to fix the problem.

I'm going to go 100% honest here: I downloaded a couple of bootable images of DiskWarrior from a torrent site. None worked (tried to boot depressing CMD+c, etc.). I tried burning them at the slowest speed and made sure they were burned as HFS. I am sure the issue is not with the superdrive itself; it was working just fine.

I also downloaded the Apple Hardware Test image from here:

Apple Hardware Test Images

but could not boot either.


On the positive front, I managed to track down the guy from which I bought the computer. He promised he'll get me the original Tiger install DVD today itself. Worst case scenario, he told me he would refer me to a guy in Delhi who serviced for him the Apple equipment he had running at his previous job.

Will keep you posted.
 

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