IBook Not Booting! Help Please!!!

Kaddock · #1 December 2nd, 2007, 06:54 PM

Hi there! I have been repairing PCs for about a decade now, so when my neighbor asked if I could take a look at a friend's comp, I said no problem... OOPS its a mac!!! This doesn't sway me, actually its the complete opposite! I would love to troubleshoot and repair this ibook, but don't know where to start, so any help is appreciated. OK so here it goes:

Symptoms:
System will start, generic clicks and chimes are heard.
If untouched, it will boot to what I am assuming is the OSX load screen (blue with swirling pattern) and then nothing more.
What I have done so far:
Let it sit...
Then I started looking on the how to guides.
Tried holding down command+s during boot. Tried holding down shift during boot. Both of these produced a gray screen, then nothing more.
Unfortunately I don't have the install CD, so that is making things more difficult, I may have to try and get it.

Thanks for any help!

**Giaguara** · #2 December 2nd, 2007, 07:19 PM

Hi Kaddock,

Hold down apple-alt-p-r (all together) at starup until you hear the startup chime for hte second time, then let it boot normally.
I find it odd that both single user mode and safe boot go to gray screen - were there any text, or any prompts or anything in there? Or is the screen totally blank?

Kaddock · #3 December 2nd, 2007, 07:37 PM

I left this chronological, but see last paragraph for the good stuff!!!

OK, went ahead and did that apple+alt+p+r, released those keys right as I heard the second chime, and then allowed boot. Still came up with that gray screen. And to answer your other question, this one, and also the previous ones, had no text, or prompts, just gray.

OK so now I turn around, and I am seeing the blue screen with the swirls. I am going to do this again and watch to see if there was anything between those screens... OK. After sitting gray for a moment, it flashed black, then flat blue twice I think... I was so sudden, not sure. Now back to the blue swirls. Any other ideas?

Oh btw, I don't know if this means anything to you, but when I am at the blue swirls, sounds work... Wait OH #$%@!!! I was pushing buttons to tell you which ones made noise, and I think I pushed escape... the cursor is back!!! Now I can see the OS. Thanks!!! What diagnostics should I run from here?

**Giaguara** · #4 December 3rd, 2007, 03:35 AM

Alright, so now that it boots to OS... what was the original symptom he had again? Where to go now depends on the symptoms he had.

Satcomer · #5 December 3rd, 2007, 03:59 AM

Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck

Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts

"Well Known" TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products

Running the Mac OS X maintenance scripts

Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption

DiskWarrior - This program has saved my hacking butt more often than I can count.

I hope some of these links can help. One more thing, check to make sure the hard drive isn't going south by opening /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and run all the routines on it and then report back what if it was good or bad.

Good Luck.

Kaddock · #6 December 5th, 2007, 12:37 AM

OK so thanks for the info. I ran disk utility, and the only thing I could do was repair permissions, I tested, and it came back with errors, so I repaired. I need to get the admin password and such before I can really get into this, because I can't install anything! They gave me two passwords, but no user names... Anyway, I am working on that, but here's the update. After running disk utility, I tried to terminally run the maintenance scripts, it wants a admin password, go figure. I decided to reboot, seeing as I can't do anything else at this point. After the chime, now I get a gray screen, after a bit it goes blue, then blue swirls, no longer starting OS (its been sitting for about ten minutes). Any ideas or workarounds? If not, I will just wait for those passwords I guess.