Had my First Mac Snaffu Last Night and it Boggles Me

[starrin]

So I have had my first Mac (Powerbook g4 - 15in) for approximately 3 months -- a couple minor things here and there but last night has me absolutely stumped.

I was using my mac on my sofa not plugged-in over my wireless network -- i decided to go up stairs so I shut all the programs down except for Microsoft Entorouage and then placed it in Sleep mode.

When I got upstairs I plugged it in and then opened it up thus bringing it out of Sleep -- and it was completely frozen.

So I held down the powerbutton and turned it off followed by a restart --on restart all i got was a gray screen and eventually a folder-like icon with a question mark. So as this persisted I broke out my OS X book and read that this means it cannot locate the hard drive or somthing is corrupted. But it was JUST WORKING - arrrrrgggghhhhhh!!!!!

So I booted off the disk that came with the PowerBook and tried the Disk Utility as the book recommends -- now the disk utility does not see my hard drive just the dvd drive.

So now I call apple support and the guy has me run some tests off the disk as well as booting off the rom. The tests come out okay. So he thinks some files/directories are corrupted. He then says lets run the "Extended Test" overnight in loop mode and see if any errors come out and since you live down the street from an apple store you could swing it by them in the morning but to give them a call first because it may be something simple. So I prepare to do this -- but when I went to bed the power cord must not have been plugged in all the way -- so a couple hours later when I checked on it -- it was dead due to no power and thus the test was not running.

So now I go to plug it in and fire-up the test all over again -- AND NOW IT BOOTS UP FINE!!! -- Everything is working.

What is up with this -- should I be concerned -- I figured I would contact Apple Support to see if they can point me to a record on the powerbook that can say what caused this.

Any help is appreciated in this matter,

Jason

 

[Padawan]

I would probably take it down to the Apple store to have them go over it anyway. I'd also back up any important or necessary files, just incase it turns out that your hard drive is damaged and you need to reformat or replace it.

 

[starrin]

I would probably take it down to the Apple store to have them go over it anyway. I'd also back up any important or necessary files, just incase it turns out that your hard drive is damaged and you need to reformat or replace it.

I think you are right about this -- back it all up because you never know what may be waiting to happen.

 

[rman]

So now I call apple support and the guy has me run some tests off the disk as well as booting off the rom. The tests come out okay. So he thinks some files/directories are corrupted. He then says lets run the "Extended Test" overnight in loop mode and see if any errors come out and since you live down the street from an apple store you could swing it by them in the morning but to give them a call first because it may be something simple. So I prepare to do this -- but when I went to bed the power cord must not have been plugged in all the way -- so a couple hours later when I checked on it -- it was dead due to no power and thus the test was not running.

It should like you ran out of battery power, during the time you were trying to test it. If remember correctly, there is a point where the battery will shut your system down when there is not enough power to run the system. That maybe the situation in your case. As soon as you plugged in the power, and everything started to function correctly lead me to believe, that you ran out of battery power.

You may want to verify to at your Apple store.

 

[starrin]

It should like you ran out of battery power, during the time you were trying to test it. If remember correctly, there is a point where the battery will shut your system down when there is not enough power to run the system. That maybe the situation in your case. As soon as you plugged in the power, and everything started to function correctly lead me to believe, that you ran out of battery power.

You may want to verify to at your Apple store.

Hi there,

I am a little confused -- but I am wondering if the battery running down in the tests may have corrected my problem some how?

Thanks,

Jason

 

[Absolute Zero]

My hard drive beeps and I have to reformat when it does because everything is so slow, or doesn't load at all.
I hate my hard drive.

 

[ZenithApricot]

Same Problem

So I have had my first Mac (Powerbook g4 - 15in) for approximately 3 months -- a couple minor things here and there but last night has me absolutely stumped.

I was using my mac on my sofa not plugged-in over my wireless network -- i decided to go up stairs so I shut all the programs down except for Microsoft Entorouage and then placed it in Sleep mode.

When I got upstairs I plugged it in and then opened it up thus bringing it out of Sleep -- and it was completely frozen.

So I held down the powerbutton and turned it off followed by a restart --on restart all i got was a gray screen and eventually a folder-like icon with a question mark. So as this persisted I broke out my OS X book and read that this means it cannot locate the hard drive or somthing is corrupted. But it was JUST WORKING - arrrrrgggghhhhhh!!!!!

So I booted off the disk that came with the PowerBook and tried the Disk Utility as the book recommends -- now the disk utility does not see my hard drive just the dvd drive.

So now I call apple support and the guy has me run some tests off the disk as well as booting off the rom. The tests come out okay. So he thinks some files/directories are corrupted. He then says lets run the "Extended Test" overnight in loop mode and see if any errors come out and since you live down the street from an apple store you could swing it by them in the morning but to give them a call first because it may be something simple. So I prepare to do this -- but when I went to bed the power cord must not have been plugged in all the way -- so a couple hours later when I checked on it -- it was dead due to no power and thus the test was not running.

So now I go to plug it in and fire-up the test all over again -- AND NOW IT BOOTS UP FINE!!! -- Everything is working.

What is up with this -- should I be concerned -- I figured I would contact Apple Support to see if they can point me to a record on the powerbook that can say what caused this.

Any help is appreciated in this matter,

Jason

Jason - I have a PowerBook 12" and the same problem and I don't know what to do?