Blue screen on iBook 10.5.6 update

[harveypooka]

A friend of mine has just installed 10.5.6 on their last gen. iBook.

She left the iBook plugged in to the mains and came back to find that the iBook was alternating between the grey Apple screen and a light blue desktop screen where she could see the cursor. Sometimes it would also switch to a blue screen without a cursor.

I've tried holding shift during startup - no effect.
I've tried rebooting NVRAM - no effect.

She has her discs, but not with her as she's away from home for Christmas.

Any ideas? She's just been bought a new iPod Nano for Christmas and can't use it!

 

[SHADO]

Try holding down the option key as soon as you hear the startup noise. Then select her HD and see if that does anything. Also, you could try resetting the PRAM by holding command+option+P+R on startup and holding it til you hear a beep or it restarts. If that doesn't work, you probably should wait until your friend gets back with her disks and then insert the Leopard install disk and run diagnostics. In the mean time though, you could try DiskWarrior and/or Drive Genius 2 to see if de-fragging the directory will solve anything. Good Luck.

 

[harveypooka]

Try holding down the option key as soon as you hear the startup noise. Then select her HD and see if that does anything. Also, you could try resetting the PRAM by holding command+option+P+R on startup and holding it til you hear a beep or it restarts. If that doesn't work, you probably should wait until your friend gets back with her disks and then insert the Leopard install disk and run diagnostics. In the mean time though, you could try DiskWarrior and/or Drive Genius 2 to see if de-fragging the directory will solve anything. Good Luck.

Nada.

Do DiskWarrior and Drive Genius require you to be able to boot to the desktop? As my friend can't.

 

[SHADO]

Nada.

Do DiskWarrior and Drive Genius require you to be able to boot to the desktop? As my friend can't.

No they do not. You just insert the CD, hold down the C key on startup, and let them do their thing. If, however, you cannot get the computer to boot from the CD, then, if you have another Mac, you can install whichever one you choose (DiskWarrior or DG2) on the other Mac. Then boot the iBook into Target Disk Mode by holding down the T key on startup until you see a FireWire symbol flashing around the screen (TGM requires a FireWire cable, so make sure you have one before you do this). When you boot into TGM, make sure the iBook is connected to the other Mac via FireWire. Then, on the other Mac, open up DiskWarrior or DG2 and select the iBook Hard Drive, then de-frag it (with DiskWarrior, the button is "Rebuild Directory"). Good Luck.