Ticket Options

Question Profile

Question Details

TICKET ARCHIVE -> ibook g4 is freezing

hodoubleg - Jan 6, 2008 - 9:15 pm

When i start the ibook g4 up, it works for anywhere between 5 seconds to an hour but mostly between seconds and a few minutes.
Also the time on my mac is set to december 31st 1969, and i can't fix that because i don't know the main password, i'm sure i need to update, but i also can't do that when the mouse and keyboard stops and i don't have the password. I don't know much about macs. This is my sisters computer, she doesn't have the discs either. However i have been trying some things i've seen on various forums such as:

/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /
sh /etc/rc

when i do the last command it says:

/etc/rc: line 28: $1: unbound variable

when that worked (which it never did) I was going to try:

passwd root

then:

reboot


anything you can do to help i would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks, Kris

Stuartpau - Jan 7, 2008 - 5:18 pm

Hi what you are experiencing, is more than likely, the battery that has died. You may need to replace it.

A lot of time when a battery dies or gets really old, it can develop short circuits in it, and these can cause the part of your computer that recharges it to overheat, this will usually cause most computers to switch off to protect themselves.

I don't know for sure as I never owned and I Book, just the Laptop, but if the date keeps reseting to a ridiculous year, that is usually and indicator that the PRAM is not receiving power, when the computer is disconnected from a power source.

You may not have the disks that came with this computer, but you should be able to get a set from Apple,or there are other places that they can be bought from. You might want to consider updating to a more current OS, like Panther as Panther 10.3.9 was a really good update for most G4 Macs and the upgrade disks should be pretty inexpensive now.

These disks will also let you get into your computer and let you change the passwords for any users already in there, and if you want to be really brave and work at the root level, you will also be able to set a password to do that. You can do this without the disks but the disks make it easy. Do not use root level unless you really know what you are doing, as you can easily damage your system as there are no limitations placed on the root user.

Make very sure that you have a DVD player in your Mac and not just a CD as most OS updates and software, comes on DVD's these days.
You will almost certainly need some way of renewing the OS or replacing the one you have.
If you find you do have a CD, then you may have to request any replacement OS installers on CD as opposed to DVD's.

Well I hope that little lot helps.
For now, I would remove the battery, and make sure that you tape over the place where it goes, until you can get a replacement, as you do not want to leave a space where garbage and loose fingers can get inside your computer.

Stuart