ibook crashes.. only works in safe mode

istonedu321 said:

Ok my friends ibook crashes as soon as he starts to bootup. but will work if he boots up into safe mode. any ideas on what to do. I am thinking about buying it from him but want to know if is fixable first. i was thinking maybe software reinstall.

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Good chance of that being a problem, since safe mode with not load some of the extra system modifiers and 3rd party widgets.

Quite a bit like booting with extensions off in OS 9.

I think Apple has an explanation of what happens in safe mode, it's changed depending on the OS version.

If he doesn't have anything he needs to save on it, ask him if you can wipe the drive and reinstally the system.

Especially if the problem happens before the log in screen, otherwise he could have a corrupt user folder.

Edit:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107392

Hmm. Was tiger including some extra stuff, seems even a bad font can mess you up.

Not widgets, surely. They don't even load until you start Dashboard.

I would not rule out bad RAM. The OS RAM footprint is smaller booting with the shift key held down.

IJ Reilly said:

Not widgets, surely. They don't even load until you start Dashboard.

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I'm talking about the 3rd party kext extensions people just have to put on their machines -- they surely don't run under Dashboard.

Those silly and stupid things people put on their machines to personalize it, that just cause problems. Skins, activity sounds, etc.

Or the worst 3rd party widget people put on their machine because they think they are protecting themselves, any Norton Product.

Sun Baked said:

I'm talking about the 3rd party kext extensions people just have to put on their machines -- they surely don't run under Dashboard.

Those silly and stupid things people put on their machines to personalize it, that just cause problems. Skins, activity sounds, etc.

Or the worst 3rd party widget people put on their machine because they think they are protecting themselves, any Norton Product.

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Agreed. Probably the only time I'd recommend a clean install of OSX is when somebody has added kernel hacks to their system.