The Unsolveable PowerBook Problem

[andy12]

I have a 12" PowerBook G4 1.5ghz. I have had zero problems with this computer until just a few days ago. All of the sudden it froze. I manually shut it down. Waited a few minutes and tried to turn it on again. All went normal, however, at the boot screen the spinning wheel under the apple all of the sudden stopped. I tried again - same thing. I tried booting in safe mode - same thing. I tried verbose mode - same thing. I booted in single user mode and did /sbin/fsck -fy as well as /sbin/fsck -fn until it said that there were no modifications. Tried to start it up again - same thing. I plugged it in to my new iMac and put it in target disc mode. From here I went into disk utility selected the drive and repaired the permissions and disk twice. Tried to restart - same thing. Tried resetting the PRAM and you guessed - same thing. I used my friends MBP OS X disc to try and boot from the disc and got the same frozen wheel under the apple. At this point I thought there was something terribly wrong with the hard drive so I replace it with a brand new one. Thinking I was made in the shade I try and boot from disc and got the same thing! I have tried to read other forums and do suggestions but they have gotten me anywhere.

Any ideas? I love this little computer and was thinking about upgrading as soon as the new MBP is released.

Thanks for you help!

 

[GregBrannon]

Do you have the airport card installed? Make sure it is fully inserted and locked into place. That's all I got.

 

[andy12]

I do. I pulled it out and than reinstalled it just to make sure it was secure. It is very firmly in there. Thanks for your response. Is nice to see a fellow 12" user still.

 

[Collin Bl]

Have you tried running the hardware test off of the disk that came with the powerbook?
If that is go then do extended test and then reset the PRAM.

 

[harryb2448]

HDD failure. In Target mode run Repair Disk and see what ios reported.

 

[andy12]

I don't have the original disks with me right now. I do have the retail copy of Leopard. Can I run the hardware check off of that? Also, if the HDD failed why would it do the same thing if I tried out a brand new hard drive? I'm just curious I really don't have an idea. Thanks for all the help.

 

[6string]

You need the install disc, but you can download the test from here:
Apple Hardware Test Images

 

[harryb2448]

Pop in your retail Leopard DVD and reboot, holding down 'C'. Go to utilities in the Menu Bar and run Repair Disk and advise what is reported?