12" powerbook gone restart crazy

[zippetmonster]

My powerbook is 4 years old with panther installed. I dropped it a couple years ago and dented the case which voided the warranty. I sent it to apple and they told me I had killed the hard drive and they wanted $950 to fix it. I said no thanks and got a 80g drive off ebay and put it in myself. It was working but having a battery charge problem that I lived with.

Here is the main problem. If I pick the computer up by where the hard drive is, front left the screen would go blank and an error message telling em I have to restart the computer now message comes up. I would restart it and as long as I did not pick it up wrong it would be fine. To be totally honest when i put the new drive in i forgot to put the two plastic bumpers on the drive so it would rattle around a little bit. I figured this is why it would make me restart it. Today I took the drive out and put the bumpers on it. I also erased everything on the computer and reinstalled osx. The computer will not get to the login part without giving me the restart message. I get the chime, the apple logo, the gears and then thats it. restart message.

The computer is worse now then it was before. I am wondering if something else is damaged inside that i can replace to make this work or what the deal is. anyone else have this problem?

 

[drewsof07]

sounds like you may have permanently damaged the HD by rattling it around for so long without bumpers.
You can get a replacement fairly cheap these days. Just make sure it's a 2.5" ATA/IDE drive.

 

[zippetmonster]

i replaced the hard drive, reinstalled OSX and the problem came back. The hard drive being damaged made sense but it was not it.

It did not take long for the computer to regress. This computer has been getting very hot in the past. Is there something that would get cooked in there that I could replace to fix this?

 

[drewsof07]

You may be looking at some LB failure
Did you visibly inspect the board when you did the HD swap for dark spots. Also, did you clean any dust/debris under there? Could be just overheating.

 

[zippetmonster]

things looked clean when i took it apart. what's LB failure? I am downloading the apple service diagnostics. hopefully this will help me out?

 

[Cathode]

My powerbook is 4 years old with panther installed. I dropped it a couple years ago and dented the case which voided the warranty.

I'm sorry for your loss. I had a similar situation take place with the hard drive. However, after four years I think your warranty was already over regardless!