Ibook g4 gray screen

My ibook is totally screwed. I already have a macbook and plan on trashing the ibook but I need to get a like two documents that are on my desktop on the g4 first. Only problem is that I can't get to the desktop. The ibook got screwy about 3 months ago. It would go gray but probably like 1 out of 10 it would go blue then finally make it to the desktop. Now though, i've booted it like 50 times and haven't gotten there once. I've tried a bunch of diff startup commands from the internet too. Didn't work. Then I got out my cd and it loaded the cd but then when I click disk utility from the restore cd it says gathering disk infomartion with the spinning circle that keeps going forever. So it doesn't get me anywhere. Anyone have any other commands or suggestions or anything for me to try? All I want to do is to get to the desktop for like 10 mins to copy down some information then I'm gonna throw this thing out the window. Thanks in advance

Try booting in firewire target mode.

Hit the power, then after the chime, press and hold the 'T' key.

A large firewire icon should appear. Then connect it to your macbook with a firewire to firewire cable and you should be able to grab the document off the mounted harddrive.

Aptmunich said:

Try booting in firewire target mode.

Hit the power, then after the chime, press and hold the 'T' key.

A large firewire icon should appear. Then connect it to your macbook with a firewire to firewire cable and you should be able to grab the document off the mounted harddrive.

Click to expand...

Yea, I actually transfered tons of stuff from my ibook to my macbook when I first got my macbook. I will try it again but my question is when I did the target mode before, I didn't see anywhere where it would let you transfer specific things. I don't want to transfer like everything on my ibook back to my macbook again cause I'm scared that'll screw some software up or something. Is that what will happen or can I actually transfer just a few little specific things? Thanks

It will just show up as a regular harddrive, so you should be able to dive in there and just transfer the files like you would off any other external volume.

is there anything else he could do to get the ibook back up and running again, because im having the exact same problem and nobody here seems to be able / want to help me :/