What's wrong with my iBook?!

Hey guys...I have a G4 iBook 800MHz...Never ever had a problem with it. I went to turn it on before, and I didn't hear the start-up chime. Then, it proceeds to the grey screen with the Apple logo, and the loading thing under it. It's been loading for the past 20 minutes...any ideas on what to do? I pressed the power button to turn it off, but then when it turned back on the same thing happened..

Eric

katie ta achoo said:

See if you can boot from the system disk.

pop it in, hold down C, and boot.

run the hardware test.

when my PB had the grey screen thing I had a bad HD.

Click to expand...

Okay, I put in the disk, held C and now its booting.

I just had to choose my language, now it says "Welcome to the Mac OS X Installer"

What next?

Eric

Hm, nevermind. I just did "Repair Permissions", and it boots up perfectly...very weird, but thanks a lot!!!

Eric

OutThere said:

Typically if you have a bad hard drive it won't make it past the opening grey screen, you'll have a (\) no entry symbol, and won't boot at all. If you get the spinning thing under the Apple, but it doesn't go from there, typically it's a permissions/software issue, and can be corrected by repairing permissions or reinstalling OS X. (Better than getting a new computer!)

Click to expand...

Hah, MUCH better. Any idea why I would have to repair permissions, why would something like this happen?

Eric

PS- it's nice to be on a Mac again