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William Wallace

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
28
0
U.S.
My friends ibook, g3 (Blueberry) will not start up completely it turns on but the screen stays gray, is there any thing he can do to fix it or is it dead?
jesse
 

nufanec

macrumors regular
Sep 10, 2005
185
5
It depends exactly how far its getting. It sounds like either the hard disk has problems and it is stalling during startup, or there is a software problem and cant start up because of that.

Is what version of the OS is it running?

If you can, try starting up from OS X install disks (put in drive and start up holding C key). Once you have done, run disk utility on the hard disk and see if there are any disk errors. If it fails you can try repairing in disk utility but if it fails several times you will possibly have to do an erase. If that doesnt fix it then the drive has actually failed and you cant do anything except replace the hard drive. If it comes up clean, try an archive and install of the system software.
 

matt90

macrumors member
I'm not sure because I don't own an iBook, but here are some generic troubleshooters to try:

1. Try starting up from the installation CD. Open the CD slot (This can be done by holding the mouse (touchpad?) button down while starting up), insert the disk, and restart while holding down the C key. If that doesn't work, hold down the option key while starting up and select the CD from the menu that appears.

2. Start up with the command, option, O, and F keys held down. A white screen with black text should appear. (If not, then yes, it probably is toast.) When the screen appears, type "reset-nvram". You may be prompted for your Open Firmware Password. If so, enter it. (If you can't remember it, then there is no way to fix your computer other than waiting for a couple of years for the on-board battery to die.) Next, type "reset-all". then, restart the computer and try step 1 again.

Apple has excellent documentation on Open Firmware Password. Make them explain it to you; I'm making this post way too long. If no menu appears when you hold down the option key or nothing happens when you hold down cmd-opt-O-F, then something's happening that I can't fix.

Hope this helps!
 
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