Great and noble Mac users,
My iBook G4 seems determined to drive me crazy. I inherited it from my girlfriend when she upgraded to a MacBook. I think she bought it new in 2005. It seems to have worked fine until recently.
The problem started innocuously: Firefox would freeze with the little rainbow icon spinning, and nothing happening. I quit the application and tried again; it did the same thing. Then ITunes started freezing, too. Irritating, but not huge. The next day, however, I turned it on, and got only the Apple logo - no 'spinning gears' underneath. I restarted; no improvement. I restarted again; this time, the spinning gears came up, but it didn't progress from there. Upon subsequent attempts (resetting PRAM, PMU, etc.), something seemed to be making a slight grinding sound: audible, but just barely so.
I threw myself at the mercy of my friend, a long-time Mac user and One Who Knows About These Things. We put all my files on his external hard drive and tried repairing mine; Disk Utility wouldn't do it. It seemed that a new hard drive was in order. Oh well, my old one was small, anyway...
So, last night, we put in a new hard drive, installed OS X Tiger (which is what I was using beforehand), and put the files back on. Everything seemed fine. However, this morning, as I was trying to reorganise my files, it wouldn't move files into folders. Alright, I thought: quick restart, that'll be fine. Of course, it wasn't: the Apple and the 'spinning gears' came up, and stayed there indefinitely. Then, after I tried to restart in Safe Mode, it came up with the flashing disc icon and a ? I've tried all the usual things again (PRAM, PMU). Nothing helps.
Any suggestions? I know there are logic board problems with this model, but it booted fine in Tiger from my friend's external drive. He suggested that it might be a problem with the connections to the hard drive - possibly a defunct cable?
Any advice would be incredibly gratefully received!
Stephen
My iBook G4 seems determined to drive me crazy. I inherited it from my girlfriend when she upgraded to a MacBook. I think she bought it new in 2005. It seems to have worked fine until recently.
The problem started innocuously: Firefox would freeze with the little rainbow icon spinning, and nothing happening. I quit the application and tried again; it did the same thing. Then ITunes started freezing, too. Irritating, but not huge. The next day, however, I turned it on, and got only the Apple logo - no 'spinning gears' underneath. I restarted; no improvement. I restarted again; this time, the spinning gears came up, but it didn't progress from there. Upon subsequent attempts (resetting PRAM, PMU, etc.), something seemed to be making a slight grinding sound: audible, but just barely so.
I threw myself at the mercy of my friend, a long-time Mac user and One Who Knows About These Things. We put all my files on his external hard drive and tried repairing mine; Disk Utility wouldn't do it. It seemed that a new hard drive was in order. Oh well, my old one was small, anyway...
So, last night, we put in a new hard drive, installed OS X Tiger (which is what I was using beforehand), and put the files back on. Everything seemed fine. However, this morning, as I was trying to reorganise my files, it wouldn't move files into folders. Alright, I thought: quick restart, that'll be fine. Of course, it wasn't: the Apple and the 'spinning gears' came up, and stayed there indefinitely. Then, after I tried to restart in Safe Mode, it came up with the flashing disc icon and a ? I've tried all the usual things again (PRAM, PMU). Nothing helps.
Any suggestions? I know there are logic board problems with this model, but it booted fine in Tiger from my friend's external drive. He suggested that it might be a problem with the connections to the hard drive - possibly a defunct cable?
Any advice would be incredibly gratefully received!
Stephen
