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TICKET ARCHIVE -> PowerBook G4 Freezes at Startup
joanimal2 - May 9, 2006 - 3:53 pm
Hi,
I have a PowerBook G4 15" laptop. I have not even had it for a year. Yesterday morning I went to go onto the computer and everything seemed fine. Then I noticed that it started closing out of programs. I decided to shut it down and restart it. However, when I turned it back on it froze on the screen of that apple logo and the loading circle. From the beginning, whenever I shut down my computer and started it back up it always showed a globe and then it would go to a folder and a question mark and then it would show the logo of the apple and load and then it would go on to the desktop. I never thought these things indicated a problem, but when I asked my friend who has the same computer she said that hers did not go through all those steps before starting up. This is the first Mac I have ever used so I am not very experienced with what to do. I have tried restarting it with the startup disk, but it continues to freeze before going into the desktop. Nothing seems to be working, so I would very much appreciate some help!
Thank you very much!!
Joanna
I have a PowerBook G4 15" laptop. I have not even had it for a year. Yesterday morning I went to go onto the computer and everything seemed fine. Then I noticed that it started closing out of programs. I decided to shut it down and restart it. However, when I turned it back on it froze on the screen of that apple logo and the loading circle. From the beginning, whenever I shut down my computer and started it back up it always showed a globe and then it would go to a folder and a question mark and then it would show the logo of the apple and load and then it would go on to the desktop. I never thought these things indicated a problem, but when I asked my friend who has the same computer she said that hers did not go through all those steps before starting up. This is the first Mac I have ever used so I am not very experienced with what to do. I have tried restarting it with the startup disk, but it continues to freeze before going into the desktop. Nothing seems to be working, so I would very much appreciate some help!
Thank you very much!!
Joanna
Thunderthud - May 9, 2006 - 5:52 pm
Joanna,
Are you able to boot from the install disk (put it in the drive and hold down the "C" key on your keyboard as you start it up?
Are you able to boot from the install disk (put it in the drive and hold down the "C" key on your keyboard as you start it up?
joanimal2 - May 9, 2006 - 10:19 pm
Thank you! I tried to boot from the intallation disk. I went through the whole process, and at the end it said that there was an error in the installation and that I should restart and retry again. I restarted and tried it all over again, but it said the same thing. I am trying as hard as I can to do this without having to erase any of my previous programs and etc. If there is something else I can do or something that I may be doing wrong I'd appreciate some advice. Do you think it may have something to do with memory??
Thank you!
Joanna
Thank you!
Joanna
Thunderthud - May 9, 2006 - 11:14 pm
Joanna,
Let's take this a step at a time.
Boot up from your install disk again and rather than installing anything go to the Utilities menu and choose Disk Utility. Have it repair your hard drive. Have it do the repair as many times as it takes until it reports no errors.
Next, while still booted from the install disk, have Disk Utility repair permissions on your hard drive. If it won't let you do this it is because it does not recognize any version of OS X on your drive. If it lets you repair permissions then your system should still be intact.
If it won't let you repair permissions then you will have to reinstall OS X but with the errors eliminated you should have better success.
When this is done, hopefully without having to reinstall the system, try to reboot from your hard drive as you normally would.
If you can have Disk Utility ON YOUR HARD DRIVE repair permissions on itself. This step is necessary to insure that the permissions reflect the version of the system that you have installed.
Please let me know what happens along the way. If you encounter an obstacle don't just shoot at it and don't panic. Let me know what you encounter.
Let's take this a step at a time.
Boot up from your install disk again and rather than installing anything go to the Utilities menu and choose Disk Utility. Have it repair your hard drive. Have it do the repair as many times as it takes until it reports no errors.
Next, while still booted from the install disk, have Disk Utility repair permissions on your hard drive. If it won't let you do this it is because it does not recognize any version of OS X on your drive. If it lets you repair permissions then your system should still be intact.
If it won't let you repair permissions then you will have to reinstall OS X but with the errors eliminated you should have better success.
When this is done, hopefully without having to reinstall the system, try to reboot from your hard drive as you normally would.
If you can have Disk Utility ON YOUR HARD DRIVE repair permissions on itself. This step is necessary to insure that the permissions reflect the version of the system that you have installed.
Please let me know what happens along the way. If you encounter an obstacle don't just shoot at it and don't panic. Let me know what you encounter.
joanimal2 - May 9, 2006 - 11:30 pm
Ok.. I don't want to do the wrong thing, so I just wanted to make sure before I do anything.
You said "have it repair your hard drive." I am in disk utilities and I see no button that says repair hard drive. I see repair disk permissions and repair disk. Also, on the side there are 4 different items that I could do repairs to. They are:74.5 GB Hitachi, Macintosh HD, 4.0 GB MATSHITADVD-, and Mac OS X Install Disk 1.
You said "have it repair your hard drive." I am in disk utilities and I see no button that says repair hard drive. I see repair disk permissions and repair disk. Also, on the side there are 4 different items that I could do repairs to. They are:74.5 GB Hitachi, Macintosh HD, 4.0 GB MATSHITADVD-, and Mac OS X Install Disk 1.
Thunderthud - May 9, 2006 - 11:37 pm
What you want is "repair disk". In the left panel choose 74.5 GB Hitachi, Macintosh HD by clicking on it once. Then click on the repair disk button.
Watch what comes up in the right hand window and if any errors are reported repair the drive again. Keep this process going until no errors are reported in the right hand window.
Then, choose "repair permissions" on the same drive.
Watch what comes up in the right hand window and if any errors are reported repair the drive again. Keep this process going until no errors are reported in the right hand window.
Then, choose "repair permissions" on the same drive.
joanimal2 - May 10, 2006 - 12:09 am
I just want to make sure that I am not wasting my time, and that I should be continuing. Every time after I press repair disk and it starts to repair at the end it always says "Disk utility stopped repairing 'Macintosh HD' because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit.
In the box on the right it says "1 HFS volume checked: 1 volume could not be repaired because of an error."
Is this what is spposed to happen? Should I continue to try to repair disk?
In the box on the right it says "1 HFS volume checked: 1 volume could not be repaired because of an error."
Is this what is spposed to happen? Should I continue to try to repair disk?
Thunderthud - May 10, 2006 - 12:32 am
Unfortunately, no, Disk Utility can not repair your drive so you need to reformat it and start over from scratch. Please tell me that you have a backup of your important data (music, pictures, documents, etc.).
Either way you are stuck with reformatting the drive. Do this in Disk Utility while booted from your install Disk. Choose "erase" from the buttons at the top of Disk Utility's dialog. Choose Mac HFS (journaled) as the format type and let it go. This will reinitialize the directory of your drive.
After reformatting you will need to do a clean install of OS X.
Next time repair errors and permissions on your drive before you update or install any software.
I'm sorry it had to come to this.
Either way you are stuck with reformatting the drive. Do this in Disk Utility while booted from your install Disk. Choose "erase" from the buttons at the top of Disk Utility's dialog. Choose Mac HFS (journaled) as the format type and let it go. This will reinitialize the directory of your drive.
After reformatting you will need to do a clean install of OS X.
Next time repair errors and permissions on your drive before you update or install any software.
I'm sorry it had to come to this.
joanimal2 - May 10, 2006 - 12:38 am
Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate your quick and helpful responses.
Unfortunately, no, I did not have a backup for any of my files. Since I have not yet had my computer for a year, I didn't feel the need to back up my files so quickly
Thank you again,
Joanna
Unfortunately, no, I did not have a backup for any of my files. Since I have not yet had my computer for a year, I didn't feel the need to back up my files so quickly
Thank you again,
Joanna
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