Won't boot from HDD. Please help.

[Sabaku.Ika]

Hi.

Starting last evening, I have been unable to make my G4 Powerbook with Tiger boot past the screen with the apple.

I used the Tiger install DVD to repair the disk. It found problems, but thinks it fixed them.

It still won't boot from the HDD.

I think what I want to do is copy a few important files to an external HDD and then reinstall the OS, but I can't seem to do that through the disk utility, unless there's a way I don't know. It will let me look inside the internal, but that isn't helpful if I can't move anything elsewhere.

Any suggestions?

[MacHarne]

Could be a bum drive. My PB hard drive totally balked at the beginning of this year. I could get to the grey screen and it would forever illuminate a nicely dulled grey. I was unable to do Target Disk Mode, too, so I couldn't back up.

Back up what you can and call Apple.

[Blue Velvet]

From within Disk Utility on the installation disk, can you make a disk image (disk image from folder) of your account and save it straight to the external?

[Sabaku.Ika]

From within Disk Utility on the installation disk, can you make a disk image (disk image from folder) of your account and save it straight to the external?
I can make a disk image as you describe, but the external drives appear grey in the side bar and I don't know of a way to save to them. I can save the image to the main drive (which is why I don't think it's dead), but that won't do me any good if I then reformat it. Or will it? Will everything on the physical drive get replaced or just the image with the OS on it?

[Sabaku.Ika]

No more ideas?