Need help desperately.

Hello everyone!

New to the forums and am in desperate need of some help/advice.

I have a lightly used 2005 17" Power Book G4 Aluminum with a 1.67GHz PPC, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB HDD, superdrive, etc. (Was fully loaded for the time). It came from the factory with Tiger, but my son has been using Leopard on it recently. I handed this Mac down to my son who uses it for Internet surfing and emailing/chat. Recently, it has been having SBODs more frequently and hangs. I have performed Disk Repair in Disk Utilities and have to repair disk permissions which for some reason, always seem to be messed up even right after "repairing" them. About a week ago, the Mac had a SBOD that lasted a long time and the screen image became distorted (skewed) while using iPhoto and completely hung requiring a manual restart. Upon restart, it now has a gray screen with the flashing ? folder. I realize that this means it cannot find a working OS, but my problems are these.

I have tried running Disk Warrior, but I simply get a gray screen with the Apple logo in dark gray and the spinning gear. The drive sounds like the reader is going crazy reading from the disc, but it never seems to finish. I am not sure if it takes hours to repair it, or if it is unable to read from it and just keeps trying and fails. The drive intermittently spins up for short periods and the read arm sounds like it is moving a lot but it never gets past this stage of spinning gear so I can troubleshoot. At least for as long as I have let it run like this, which is about 45 minutes to an hour.

I also have tried to re-boot from my Tiger OS discs, but it doesn't allow me to get to ANY diagnostic or Archive & Install screen. I cannot locate the Leopard disc I used to install Leopard, so I cannot try that either. I basically want to recover the music and photos on the machine at this point, as it's been about 6 months since I last backed this machine up but I would like to get it working again obviously also.

Does anyone know how long Disk Warrior should take to get to a troubleshooting screen? (Seemed like the last time I used it, it was pretty quick, about 5 minutes max).

Also, why can't I perform a erase and install from the Tiger discs that came with the machine if nothing else? I know I would lose the music and photos, but if nothing else, I would like to get my son a usable computer again.

I have tried safe boot but it doesn't complete to a usable screen, but I AM able to get to Open Firmware input screen but I am unfamiliar with OF, so I am not sure what command if any, is available to Archive & Install. Does anyone know if I can try anything from the OF screen?

Does this sound like a bad HDD, or something else?

Any tips I haven't tried that someone can offer?

Any help will be greatly appreciated. I am unemployed and cannot afford to buy my son a new laptop.

Thanks in advance.

Pat

G'day and welcome to the forums.

How long did you give DiskWarrior please Patrick? On older machines it can take up to 15 minutes to load from the DVD so give it time. Do not worry about those messages in Repair Permissions they are unimportant. Your main problem is the six months without a backup. Not good.

When you boot from the Tiger install discs, if they are the original, leave the Installer and go to Utilities in the Menu Bar if possible. That is where Disk Utiltiy > Repair Disk resides. It does sound like a failing hard drive, but give DiskWarrior say 30 minutes to load.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1448

G'day Harry.

Thanks for the reply.

Since my initial post, I have allowed Disk Warrior to run for a full hour about until the Mac self-rebooted with the POST chime but it returned to the gray screen with flashing ? folder. It never allows me to see a GUI for the Disk Warrior disc of any sort.

When I insert the Tiger OS disc, and hold down C to boot from the disc, . I get the POST chime, the screen turns a lighter gray and I get the Apple logo and the spinning gear screen. The drive spins up like it's reading the drive and the disc read arm sounds as if it's searching for data periodically, just as it normally would. Unfortunately, it just seems to spin up, slow down, spin up, slow down and the gear on the screen just seems to spin incessantly and not much else happens. Again, I never seem to get to a GUI screen to see anything, much less select anything. I am trying it once more and am just going to allow the disc to remain in and the gear to spin.

I agree that the HDD is likely shot, but I'd sure like to get my photos and music off of it and onto my EHD. I am not sure what it would cost to get the music and photos recovered by a professional data recovery specialist, ir if that is even possible, considering the HDD appears to be corrupt and unreadable. (I've never had to do data recovery, so I am not even sure how it works).

Will allow the spinning gear screen to run until it does something different OR a few hours go by as I take my son to the beach for awhile.

Thanks again for the reply. I hope I have something positive to report when I get back.

Cheers mate.

Pat

Professional recovery costs an arm and a leg Patrick. You might look at Data Recovery 3 trial version to see if the files are recoverable. And it sure sounds like your diagnosis of the drive is spot on.

http://www.prosofteng.com/downloads/download.php?prodID=78

Whilst it will let you see the files that are recoverable, the demo only allows 10MB of recovery.

Thanks again, mate.

Just got home from the beach and the spinning gear is still going at it. Nothing different from almost 2 hours ago.

Guess it's a given that my next step is to try to find a cheap HDD to put in it.

Thanks for the advice on the Data Recovery 3 trial. I will give that a try.

If you happen to think of anything else I can try, please post it. I will leave the thread open a few days in the event you or anyone else has anything else to offer.

Thanks again, mate.

Pat

Update

Greetings lads,

I wanted to give an update about my problem. I managed to get my hands on the OS 10.5 Leopard that I have (had) installed on my system. I put the disc in the drive and started the machine holding C. Well, much to my surprise, it started. It allowed me to get to the menu where I could get into Disk Utility. I ran a repair of my hard drive which appeared to be working. Ran almost to the end of the powerbar and responded with REPAIR FAILED. I ejected the CD and tried to restart and it would do nothing. I put the disc back in and attempted to re-install the system software, but it too failed to install. Again, I went back into Disk Utility, and well here's where I made the blunder of all blunders. I ASSumed that there must be a problem with the disk and thought well, if I had to replace a HD, I may as well try the ERASE feature and see if erasing the hard disk would return it to a clean slate and then I could simply put in the disc and re-install onto the clean disk.

Well, not so simple, as now the Mac boots to a gray screen and little else. Even when the disc is in the drive and I hold C, the OS doesn't boot the computer.

I have tried every step I know and have found online such as safe boot, resetting the PRAM and NVRAM, and nothing seems to work. I can get into Open Firmware ("OF") and that is pretty much it. When I check in OF if my hard drive is seen by running "devalias hd", it responds with "/pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/disk@0 ok". (I am not the master of Openfirmware, but I think this means my disk is found, but is it okay?)

I have read numerous technical articles and have gone as far as pulling the RAM (2 - 1GB sticks) and putting it back in and nothing helps. When I try holding down OPTION when I start to get to the hardware test, I get only two options, an arrow in a circle and an arrow pointing to the right and nothing else. A watch with spinning hands then appears and after about 1 minute or so, the hands stop spinning and the "watch cursor" freezes requiring manual shut down. I try to place the watch cursor on the arrow to the right and click, but of course nothing happens and no hardware gets tested.

I am at my wits end with this thing. It's been a great computer and I know it is old, but I really want to save it from the grave. I am not sure if buying a new hard drive is what I need to do or if maybe I screwed up the basic system files that run the installer CD when I erased the disk, (which btw, it said the erase failed also, so I don't know what to think or do). Now when I start the Mac I get the gray screen or a gray screen with the no entry (circle and slash) with a spinning gear.

I would really be most appreciative if someone could give me some advice on things to try. I looked for Firmware Updates for the 17" G4 Powerbook, but the Apple page didn't offer much in the way of updates as the machine is obviously too old to support.

Someone please help me if you can. I need it.

Thanks in advance!

Patrick

I think you should have considered the possibility that the optical drive or motherboard could be the problem.

I would have tried an external CDROM drive.

Thank you gsahli for the reply.

The reason I suspected HD issues over optical drive is that when the syste, first crashed, I was having problems with the HD and prior to performing the ERASE function, the optic drive spun up perfectly and appeared to read the entire disc (for about 35 minutes) and all of the install disc, although the system reported that it failed install.

This laptop, although old, has rarely been used. Maybe 50 times in total. I maybe have watched 2-3 movies on it and I do not suspect motherboard simply because the install appeared to be working and I could access Disk Utility and such. I am not expert, but if I had a bad motherboard, I doubt I could have accomplished these tasks.

I do not discredit trying an external CDROM drive, but the fact I don't have one laying around, I tried the erase disk option first.

My question is this, let's say i TOTALLY screwed up the OS files to the point where it's affected firmware and nothing works. What is the route of elimination to fix what is wrong? If I get a new hard drive and install it, and the OS disc doesn't install then, what's the next step to try? I thought by resetting NVRAM and PRAM the computer was rest to a default state where the optical drive drivers and all should work.

I unplugged the machine and removed the battery and reset the PMU and allowed it to stay free of all power overnight. Actually about 18 hours, and still when I boot with the Leopard disc in the drive, holding C down, all I get is a grey screen, with a circle and slash and perpetual spinning gear.

Is there any troubleshooting I can do from Open Firmware?

Thanks again for any and all replies!

Patrick

You HDD is dead, and it sounds link the machine has either optical drive or logic board issues. I wouldn't throw too much money at this. You should get able to get a replacement drive (Ultra ATA in those machines if I recall) for $50-100. That's as far as I'd go. You can use the machine without a functional optical drive, but if the logic board is going, I wouldn't waste any more time or money.

Patrick you could see if you can get a used 2.5" ATA hard drive but they are getting pretty scarce these days. As suggested do not spend too much money on it. It is getting old mate and the value is no longer there. The optical drive on all laptops, being a slot loader, area pretty unreliable.

Could not suggest to you purchasing a drive and an optical drive as it may well be the mobo. Time to really consider something newer, certainly an Intel Core 2 Duo model. Even if things are a little tight, it is the best course in the long term. Even a used drive is going to set you b ack quite a few dollars.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/100GB-IDE-2...Disk_Drives&hash=item3375e0662e#ht_500wt_1156

Thanks G Mo and thanks to you as well Harry!

I don't really plan on throwing much money at the Powerbook, guys, I promise. I would like to try to replace the hard drive and will certainly try to find a used one locally from someone, but I am a little bit confused as to what will work.

I pulled the drive out today and it is a Seagate Momentus 5400.2 120 GB drive. When I chased the specs for this drive, I get this:

Brand
Seagate
Series
Momentus 5400.2
Model
ST9120821A
Interface
IDE Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6
Capacity
120GB
Cache
8MB
Average Seek Time
12.5ms
Average Write Time
14.5ms
Average Latency
5.6ms
RPM
5400 RPM
Form Factor
2.5"

I notice when I search online for them, they are still available, and not too expensive really, anywhere from 40-100 USD. I see a lot of different interface offerings on hard drives such as SATA, PATA, EIDE, EIDE/ATA, IDE, DMA/ATA-100, IDE/ATA etc. - I pretty sure I have to use the IDE Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6 drives, correct? Also, I see some drives offered at 7200 RPM and faster seek times and such, and my question is, can I get and use the 7200 RPM drives in place of the 5400 as long as they are IDE Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6?

I won't be changing out the optical drive and nor will I mess with the mobo. I know it's not worth that. I just believe in my heart of hearts that this optical drive is functional. Not to beat a dead horse, but it's barely been used and it appeared to read and sounded like it was reading just fine when I put the Leopard disc in the drive the other day (before I tried tried the erase option in Disk Utility).

If you guys could humor me once more and answer my question about the interface and RPM compatibilities, I will buy one, swap it out and see if it works. If it doesn't, then I am maybe out $50-$75 US for the final try at resurrection. If it doesn't work, I will sell the drive locally on Craigslist or something and the Powerbook will be parted out. I am sure there are plenty of G4 PBs still running in need of spare parts like a monitor, etc.

It kills me to think I paid $2800 in 2005 for this machine and it may end up in the skip as worthless. Especially because it has been used so little, really.

I think if a replacement hard drive doesn't work, I may have to burn a live CD version of Ubuntu and see if it will run from CD. As much as I love Macs, (and I truly do), I am not sure I will buy another one, considering there are so many Linux platforms I can put on a NEW Windows based computer that I can buy for $400.

Thanks for the responses and for allowing me to vent. Would appreciate answers to the last two questions I will have for this thread.

Many thanks to all of you.

Patrick

Well put it this way Patrick. Divide $2800 by 7, the number of years use, equals $400 a year. Was it worth $7.70 a week? If so you have lost nothing. If not you purchased the wrong machine.

Now a 7200rpm IDE - EIDE - PATA drive will be fine if you can find one at the correct price but do not expect amazingly fast improvements - marginal at best. Put one in my Dell Latitude C640 and made a nice improvement, but not dramatic. And if you install linux could be no coming back booting from the Mac CD.

Harry,

Thanks mate. No doubt I bought the wrong machine back in 2005. I bought it for a job I had at the time and the contract was lost about 4 months later. In hindsight, I wish I would have sold it then as I simply wasn't travelling anymore, but hindisght is 20/20.

Thanks for the tip on the 7200rpm IDE - EIDE - PATA drive. Also for the heads up about installing Linux. The only way I would ever run Linux on the Mac is with a Live CD so there is no installing of the OS. It simply runs from the disc. AND, I would only do that in the event that the new drive will not take the Leopard OS. Being it will be a new drive should I install Tiger first (which came with the machine), then upgrade to Leopard, or with a new HDD, will it not matter?

Thanks again mate.

Pat

Hey guys,

I found a paper that I wrote notes on when the last install failed. Maybe some of you more savvy types can decipher what all of this means as to why the install failed.

After the install failed, I was attempting to verify and repair the volume and received this notification:

"Invalid Node Structure"

"Rebuilding Catalog B-Tree"

"rebuilding volume estimated time 20 minutes"

(After 2 hours or more of no progress on progress bar, I manually stopped the process. I then clicked on REPAIR DISK to reattempt a repair without verify and got the following):

"Invalid B-Tree node size"
"Volume check failed"
"Error File system verify or repair failed"

(This is when I tried the ERASE option)

Anyway, i forgot that I had written down notes and just found these today and thought I would share to help get some insight on the failure. I have found a replacement drive online, but have yet to order. Will wait to see if anyone knows what these notifications mean as to the viability of a recovery of my HDD.

Thanks again, gents.

Pat