PowerBook G4 not booting

[mikeq]

Hi - Please help?

My PowerBook G4 won't boot in safe mode, just sits with a grey screen and apple, no spinning gear and that's it.

I've booted using the install disk and done a disk utility repair and although it has said it repaired, when I restart it still only gets as far as grey screen with spinning gear.

Is there a way around this, or am I going to have to do an erase and install?

Thanks

Mike

[bharoche]

Yesterday I cloned Leopard from an external drive to my internal HD using SuperDuper and had the same experience you describe (actually I got the eternally spinning gear). Turns out SD doesn't yet support Leopard and all the permissions got screwed up. I'm wondering if that's your issue - permissions and ACL's. Any way, the solution I believe is a clean install. Might boot your machine in target disk mode if you need to get files off of it first.

[mikeq]

Many thanks,

I'm still only a tiger rather than a leopard. I will try the "target disk mode" first then do the clean install as it appears the only thing to do.

Thanks again for the help.

[R0b010146]

(With Safe Mode it will take much longer to boot)

Try booting to Open Firmware- by after hitting the power button, holding Command+Option+O+F. Once Open firmware loads, type in

Reset NVRAM

(press enter)

Reset All

(press enter)

this should turn off the machine.

Try zapping the PRAM by directly after hitting the power button hold down. Command+Option+P+R until you hear three chimes and then let go. The computer should boot.

[mikeq]

Thank you for both suggestions.

I am waiting for a friends MAC before trying to target disk mode then it looks like I'll have to do a fresh install.

I tried reseting in Open Firmware, then the PRAM suggestion. Sadly it didn't work.

I tried Resetting the PMU and that didn't work.

So I am still at a loss.

If you or anyone else has a suggestion I'd appreciate it.

Thanks so far.

[mikeq]

FYI

The only thing that worked was to re-install using preserve settings. I kept my data, emails etc. It has happened once more since then but seems to be working fine.

Thanks you guys for helping.