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ave8tor

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 2, 2009
2
0
Meridian, MS
Hey everyone,

I'm about at my wits end and figured this was the last place to turn before I jump off the roof of my house. A few days ago, my dog knocked my 12" Powerbook off the couch, while it was in standby mode. After this happened, my wife opened it up and she said it seemed to be working fine. However, later in the day, when I opened it up, the screen remained black and just kinda running in limbo.

So, I reset and what I kept running into was during the initial boot up, when the Apple icon is displayed with the little progress wheel spinning below it, the screen tints grey and a warning pops up. I forget what all it says, but essentially I need to restart, in about 6 different languages. When I do this, it keeps looping to this same issue, and I cannot get past the boot up process.

About a year ago, I replaced the hard drive and logic board (a little unecessary, because all that was bad was the cable from the HD to the board) and would receive this same warning when I would pick up the computer too fast with only the left side being held. Kinda weird, but I wasn't sure if it was a hard drive issue, or something else. Anyway, today I went in and replaced the logic board back to the original (1.0 GHz) to see if it was an issue with the board, since I never had any issues before the hardware change.

Now what happens is that when I start up, a little icon of the world in a square box flashes for about 15 seconds, followed by a folder icon with an alternating '?' and Finder icon. I'm guessing that the OS can't be found. I have a bit of information on the hard drive that I want to recover, since I don't remember what I have put on since the last backup.

My question: Is there any other way to gain access to the hard drive without going to a data recovery service? And if not, any suggestions on where to get this done?

Original Hardware:
12" PowerBook 1.0 GHz w/ 40 GB hard drive (I'm pretty sure it was a 40, can't find it anywhere in the house)

Hardware at time of error:
1.25 GHz w/ 120 GB hard drive

Current configuration w/ no boot up:
1.0 GHz w/ 120 GB hard drive

-Matt
 

Yoursh

macrumors 6502
May 28, 2006
326
0
MN
To get the data off, the first thing to try is to see if the Powerbook will boot into target disk mode. You do this by holding down the 'T' key while pushing the power button to turn it on. If the logic board can, the screen should show a firewire icon. Then you should be able to plug a firwire cable into the Powerbook and the other side into another Mac and that Mac should see the Powerbook as a firewire hard drive.

If that doesn't work your only other option is to pull the hard drive out of the Powerbook and put it into an external hard drive case. If the hard drive is somehow dead, then you're looking at an exspensive data recovery.
 

ave8tor

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 2, 2009
2
0
Meridian, MS
Thanks for the help! Actually, after the first post, I tried to run the boot disc to see if the hard drive was connected, which it was not. I hadn't bothered to try that with the other logic board before I changed it, so I went ahead and switched it out again, and shazam... it booted up normally! Now its time to back up before its too late!

-Matt
 
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