I'm trying to help out a friend who is not able to boot their Powerbook G4 past the gray screen with the Apple logo. I don't have much experience with macs but do have a fair amount of experience with Unix systems...so thought I could be of help.
The problem started when a "start up disk is full" warning appeared. My friend then proceeded to reboot instead of clearing out space (studpid move...I know). Needless to say it did not reboot. I was able to boot in single user mode by pressing the cmd-s keys. I then went in and deleted files in order to clear some space for start up. I managed to get the disk space down to 88% capacity, which I think should be sufficient for it to boot (shouldn't it?)
However it will still not boot past the gray screen. In addition, I have tried resetting the PRAM and NVRAM. I have run the fsck -y command in the command line. Nothing seems to be wrong with the HD. Unfortunately, the restore disks that comes with the mac are not readily available. I have not been able to think/find any other possible solutions. Other than taking it to a mac tech or buying a new mac, what are some other solutions that I can try? Thanks in advance for the help.
The problem started when a "start up disk is full" warning appeared. My friend then proceeded to reboot instead of clearing out space (studpid move...I know). Needless to say it did not reboot. I was able to boot in single user mode by pressing the cmd-s keys. I then went in and deleted files in order to clear some space for start up. I managed to get the disk space down to 88% capacity, which I think should be sufficient for it to boot (shouldn't it?)
However it will still not boot past the gray screen. In addition, I have tried resetting the PRAM and NVRAM. I have run the fsck -y command in the command line. Nothing seems to be wrong with the HD. Unfortunately, the restore disks that comes with the mac are not readily available. I have not been able to think/find any other possible solutions. Other than taking it to a mac tech or buying a new mac, what are some other solutions that I can try? Thanks in advance for the help.