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tolva

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 29, 2007
2
0
Have a powerbook that is running very slow. The system would get stuck at the apple logo when first booting up. I booted off the install disk, ran disk utility, verified the disk and permissions were ok. Still got stuck at the logo screen. I tried to access the drive in target mode from my other system, but the system would lock up. I installed 10.4, and was able to get to the login screen, but the system now hangs with the rainbow circle spinning forever. I tried starting the system in "Safe" mode, but same results. The hard drive only has about 4gigs free. The system is about 4 years old, and the only thing I could think of was the drive was going bad. I then booted from the install disk, opened a terminal, went to my home directory/Library and renamed my Preferences and Cache file. The login was successful, but the system is still very slow, and now my home directory keeps opening and closing, and the spinning rainbow circle is still running constantly.

Any thoughts ?

Thanks in advance.
 

ab2650

macrumors 6502a
Jun 21, 2007
714
0
I'd agree that it sounds like the drive is very near it's last days. Do you have backups of your data? I'd see what options you have to install a new drive, but I'm unsure of how difficult it is or if it's even a customer replaceable item on the PB.

Edit: I believe you could try booting from an external firewire drive to see if your internal HDD is really at fault.
 

tolva

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 29, 2007
2
0
Not on this system. When, I connect the system to my macpro, everything locks up, until I pull the firewire cable off.

I thought I could create a bootable image from my macpro to the external drive, but the restore process fails. Also, I thought if I do that, it would erase what items I have on the external drive. Am I wrong ?

Thanks again for the assist
 
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