Crash???

[kwabena]

I have a very big problem. Last night I was using my powerbook g4 12" and it went off all of a sudden. I thought it was on sleep, but I couldnt wake it up. I did the force power off thing,by pressing the power button till it went off. I restarted and I got this flashing folder with a question mark. as well as a finder icon. + my optical drive died some time back so i cant even run the mac os x dvd.
Did my hard disk crash? Can I fix it? please help me out. i got my dissertationand all my hard to find music on it.

 

[samh004]

This really is why you do backups of your stuff.

You'll have to take it in to Apple but it'll likely not be covered under any warranty anymore so it'll cost you, and they likely wont be able to recover anything. Always worth trying though.

 

[markcres]

Look on the bright side... it gives you a perfect excuse to upgrade to a brand new shiny MAC !!

 

[richard.mac]

try booting into your install dvd and selecting startup disk in the utilities menu. choose your startup drive and click restart. might fix it? if that doesnt work try repairing your disk in disk utility while still booted into the install dvd. lastly try reseting your PRAM.

 

[sammich]

try booting into your install dvd and selecting startup disk in the utilities menu. choose your startup drive and click restart. might fix it? if that doesnt work try repairing your disk in disk utility while still booted into the install dvd. lastly try reseting your PRAM.

The OP mentioned that his Disc drive died a while back.

What you can do (something which I done before, successfully): find a firewire CD/DVD drive and boot off the Install Disc with it

OR

find someone with a mac with Firewire. Connect the two with a FW cable then turn your computer on whilst holding down the 'T' key, wait for a orange firewire symbol to appear on screen. Wait a few more seconds, if your laptop drive appears on the working computer's desktop run Disk Utility on it for any problems. Back up everything and try and run the Apple Hardware Diagnostic CD that came with the computer or just try for a reinstall.
If it doesn't appear some software may still be able to get data off it. Data Rescue II did the job for me. Download the trial before buying (if it comes to that).

 

[macjack1]

Try steps #2 & 3 from this Apple support topic

-mj