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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Ibook freeze up sys X.3.9

HarryFischer - Jan 10, 2008 - 8:47 am

Greetings,

I have a 14 in. ibook with dual usb. System 10.3.9. 512 ram. There is no physical reset button under the keyboard.

All was well until saturday when it started up fine and then froze after a few minutes. Restart did the same thing. Then restart resulted in a blank blue screen after the gray apple and spinning wheel. Force quit did not work. I had to hold down the power button to shut down.

Since, I have tried zapping the pram and fsck as per info I found on your website. No effect. fsck did make a repair and the 2nd run through resulted in the all seems ok message but no change after reboot.

The drive will not play a dvd.

I tried using the software restore disk. It did start up and I tried running permissins repair. It was progressing but froze again.

I tried doing a software reinstall but after a few minutes froze again.

I can start up in safe mode to run fsck and tried a longer repair i found un your website where i have to enter my user name. Unfortunatly since there is automatic login i don't remember my username but tried several things i thought is was. The message was that no file exixts.

I do know my password since I do regular software updates. No recent updates were done.

I have a complete back up on an external hard drive but it is in another country and I'm the British Virgin Islands for a few months. I may be able to get it shipped to me. I also have a copy of disk warrior there and may be able to get it too.

The battery is only 1 year old and appears to be charging correctly. The 4 lights appear on the battery. The same problem persists even when plugged in.

Standing by for your suggestions/questions.

Harry Fischer
Vagabond@tntgroup.com


I

Serenak - Jan 11, 2008 - 4:28 pm

Hello Harry

welcome to macosx.com and I will do what I can to assist and advise you.

Well a bit of a sticky problem you have - you have done the most obvious (PRAM, fsck, start from the Installer, etc.)

If the reinstall has failed it is unlikely that you will now boot the Mac any way except from the Installer - as you are away from home and all your backups and tools you do have a bit of an issue. Disk Warrior might have helped in the first instance but now you have tried to reinstall and it has stalled you probably only have a partial system at best.

Unfortunately I can only really recommend 4 courses of action

1) If you are lucky you might be able to still get Target Disk Mode (start the Mac and hold the T key) if you get a big FW symbol (the thing that looks a bit like a Radiation sign) then you might be able to connect the Mac to another one with a FW cable and see the HDD as if it was an external drive. If that is possible grab your data and then probably do a wipe and install from the Installer

2) Make more attempts to get the Mac to reinstall the OS from the Installer. Be warned though, repeated failed attempts can leave the Mac in a state where the only option left is a Wipe and Clean Install - and if you have data on there you want that is not a good situation to be in if you are away from the backups.

3) Start the Mac from the installer holding down the D (I think - it is printed on the Disk anyway) to get the Hardware Test (or if you have a set of CDs it is probably a separate disk with the instructions printed on it) Run the Hardware Test and see what it says.

4) Consider taking it to an Apple Hardware specialist and have it checked for hardware failures.

Sorry I can't be much more helpful or positive atm ... If you want to come back and tell me what transpires I will be happy to try and advise or help you further.

PS if you can still start in Safe Mode do it and back up your data now... buy an external drive if you have to - the data is the most critical item now - OSs can be reinstalled, hard drives can be swapped out, laptops can be replaced - your data is what matters (and possibly applications if you are away from the installers). At least you do have backups, even if they are 100s or 1000s of miles away, copies can be got to you in extremis. And professional data recovery is very, very expensive.

HarryFischer - Jan 12, 2008 - 4:41 pm

Thanks for the great reply,

Based on your comments I tried the T key.I got a soft tone, the sleep light flashes several times fast, and I did get the big FW symbol. Good news. Also I have contacted friends where my computer is and my back up external drive may arrive on Monday. If I do need to do a complete wipe and install. I do not have my own software install disks. I used ones from friends emac.

Along that line: when I tried doing the reinstall I am pretty sure it was still in the evaluation mode when it froze. If my Disk Warrior arrives too, I will try that first to see if it will run. If it starts up and freezes during Disk Warrior what will that tell me??

I tried holding down the D key as in step 3. The result was That I got a very colorful screen about 4" square with a person icon on the left side and what I believe is my correct username. It also had blocks and symbols for sleep restart and shut down. I tried restart with the same blue screen and freeze. Back in the beginning when I tried the series of commands after the fsck check I tried this username but still got the note that the file didn't exist. Maybe I didn't get spaces or underscores right or something. Could you send a set of instructions that would apply to the ibook and 10.3.9?

On the disk I did use from the emac It actually said to use the option key instead of d but I didn't look until after I ejected it. It did recognize that it was not for this machine when I tried the hardware test but it did let me get to the point of attempting to run it. Does that suggest that the hard drive might be functioning??

I rooted around on the apple website some more and ran across instructons to hold down the option, command, p, and R keys and wait for 2 beeps. I never got 2 beeps but it kept attempting to restart. I got a soft tone first then the usual start up chime and then the blue screen and another restart attempt.

As a side question I have been thinking of buying a refurbished laptop with the same OS so my software will still work. Can you recommend any reliable refurbishers?

I look foreword to your further comments,

Thanks, Harry

HarryFischer - Jan 12, 2008 - 4:45 pm

Hi again,

I just re read my note above and noticed I forgot one other question: If I am going to do a wipe and reinstall fron the external drive could you send specific instructions to do it correctly?

Thanks again, Harry

Serenak - Jan 12, 2008 - 5:50 pm

Hello again Harry

OK you can get FW Target mode which is encouraging - though the soft tone and the flashing sleep light is not normal in that situation (it is usually associated with Firmware updates or resetting the power management)

Your backups are in transit - also good, using disks from another Mac, not so good - Apple don't do much to restrict their OS disks - after all it is only going to work on another Mac) but they do have some model restrictions and may fail to work (and for example if you use a Desktop Mac installer and get it to work don't expect the trackpad to work afterwards... it won't have the trackpad software to install...)

The reason that you got a weird screen is probably that the disk was expecting a CRT monitor as in the eMac and you have an LCD of a different resolution, I am surprised it got even that far... Hardware tests on shipped disks are usually specific to a class of Macs - so one from an eMac is unlikely to help you a lot.

Apple-Alt-P-R resets the PRAM (that is it returns a slew of internal settings to the built in defaults... and yes it can sometimes make a "stuck" Mac start up again - but you had already said you zapped the PRAM so I didn't bother to mention it... there are other ways to do it - such as via the OF screen so perhaps you used that method? (reset-nvram, return, reset-all, return...?)
If you haven't done it try this... restart the Mac holding Apple-Alt-O-F you should get a grey screen with small text saying "welcome to Open Firmware" and a command prompt type in as above eset-nvram, return, reset-all, return and the Mac should attempt to restart.

Disk Warrior will boot the Mac, or not, if it boots then run it and if it can fix the disk it will, if it can't it will usually fail and tell you why it can't fix it. If it can't boot it then the Mac probably has more serious problems than a bad disk or a corrupted system.

As to the side question... I am in the UK so can't probably help you much there but www.lowendmac.com is a very good place to go for links to older Macs and sellers thereof, and a very good site to boot I might add, well worth bookmarking!

Regarding your username - what you saw on the screen you got is your finder username... the unix username will be the same but all lowercase and no spaces, so John Doe (Apple Finder usable username is really johndoe - the name you see on your "home" folder. However when you start in Single User mode (holding S) only the BSD Unix kernel loads - so that you can run fsck or if you are Unix savvy do CLI stuff - if there is a way to start the Mac finder from there I don't know it... Personally I would not mess about in the single user mode unless you are Unix CLI savvy - you can get yourself into big trouble!

However if you can get into single user and do fsck then it is unlikely the HDD is fubar - just the system software...

OK next point - using your backup hard drive - if your backup is a bootable "clone" such as you might have made with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! you should be able to plug it in, start up holding the Alt key to see bootable systems, select the backup drive and then once started from that consider the options. If it is merely a data backup then it will not help you get the Mac running, only give you access to whatever is stored there if you have to do some sort of wipe and install. For future reference if you do not have a bootable clone and you travel a lot it would seriously be worth considering a "pocket HD" with an upto date bootable clone as a worthwhile investment... CCC is FREE btw and SuperDuper! costs a piddling amount for the functionality and security it can provide you.

Hope some of them above comments help... please keep coming back and I will be pleased to keep supporting you as far as I am able... if there is one real frustration in this "job" it is the inability to "lay hands on", if you were here with me I am sure we could have the PB up and running in a short time, or if not, at least determine if it needed more serious HW repair

HarryFischer - Jan 13, 2008 - 8:20 am

Thankyou Serenak,

I will let you know what happens after the external drive arrives. Might be a couple of days.

Harry

Serenak - Jan 13, 2008 - 1:17 pm

OK Harry

it would be handy to make sure the ticket stays open to enter a reply to this within 48 hours...

HarryFischer - Jan 14, 2008 - 11:15 am

Hi again Serenac,

My Le Cie external firewire drive arrived along with Disk Warrior.

It did start up using the Disk warrior but while still in the examining stage it froze again. None of the keystrokes or the eject key worked but I attempted a restart and eject at the same time and that did the trick.

I attached the external drive and tried the option key at start up. I got a simple screen with a restart symbol on the left an arrow on the right I assume if for continue and symbols for the both drives. I guess that it also meant it recognized the drive. I clicked on the external symbol and the arrow. I got a red circle with the slash for don't or stop.

I guess the external drive isn't a bootable disk but I thought sure EVERYTHING was on that drive.

Was there a different keystroke to use the external drive??

What do we try next.

Harry

Serenak - Jan 14, 2008 - 11:27 am

Hello Harry

Don't give up yet do the Alt startup so you get the simple screen, select the external drive and press the little restart button (the right pointing arrow means look for more drives)

If that doesn't start it we will have to put our heads together for a wangle

HarryFischer - Jan 15, 2008 - 3:20 pm

Hello,

I have tried the alt startup by selecting the external drive and clicking on the restart circle. The computer recognixed the click and the drive hilighted as expected. It blinked and the screen refreshed showing that it had aotomaticly shifted back to the ibook startup. Continuing, it gave the little wait watch symbol for about a minute then the arrow pointer returned nothing else happened. There was no freexe this time though but nothing else happened.

Are we running out of ideas?? I'm thinking to take it to the mac specialist. He may have an actual ibook system disk.

Harry

Serenak - Jan 15, 2008 - 3:41 pm

Hello Harry

I think that we are indeed running out of options now... what is needed is indeed an iBook specific set of installer/boot disks (or a full "retail" OS installer)

You have your backups so it is likely that if you have to either wipe and install or even swap out the HDD you can use Migration Assistant (or if not, at least have all your stuff to hand on the external).

For future reference (especially if you travel away a lot) you may want to investigate CCC and SuperDuper! that I mentioned before - both of which can create a bootable "clone" of your drive (which is not the same as a simple copy of the drive).

Very sorry that I can't help you much more, if DiskWarrior boots the Mac but can't repair it I have to suspect a fairly major HHD problem.

Good luck and please do feel free to come back and let me know what happens - I would genuinely be interested to find out.

Again really sorry that from here I can't do much more right now. I know the ticket will probably expire before you get a resolution so if you would like to let me know what transipres you can email me at serenkaster(at)googlemail(dot)com...

If you need the iBook for work then I think that wasting more time is probably counter productive now... if you were here I have little doubt that we could determine more precisely the exact problem - but you are in the Virgin Islands and I am in Suffolk UK ...

HarryFischer - Jan 16, 2008 - 1:30 pm

Hi Serenak,

Thanks for all your help. I will be showing the tech all of our communication and suggest an ibook disk first. I will definatly let you know how it turns out at the e-mail address you included in the last message. I guess we should close this ticket. My e-mail is vagabond@tntgroup.com I'll send pictures from the land of salt water and warmth if I can get to my drive.

Harry