IBook G4 wont boot. please help!!!

[dtakias]

hi

About 2 weeks ago I overwrited some files on my ibook. Since I had no data recovery software for macs, i used easy recovery pro and connected the laptop hard drive to my windows box.

Once I had it connected, windows asked me to initialise the hard drive and without even thinking about it I said yes.

I did raw(sector by sector) recovery and managed to find a few files. The problem is that now the ibook wont boot no matter what i try. I have tried using disk warrior and repaired the file system.

Also when I start it in firewire disk mode and connect it to another macbook, it will load the partition with all the files inside it. So the files are there but it will not allow me to boot the OS.

I assume its like when windows looses its bootloader and you need to boot into recovery console and do commands like fixmbr and fixboot. I reckon initialising the disk created all those problems...

I have also tried fsck /y, reseted all settings, reseted nvram, zap the pram and run the open firmware hardware test and it did pass everything.

Any gurus out there please help me!

 

[Darwin]

You could always do a reinstall which would archive the existing system and provide you with a new one, then you would need to move files from the old to the new.

 

[dtakias]

if i do a reinstall how will i know that it will archieve my previous installation?

also i just tried to boot off the dvd but it will hang after i press continue on the fsecond installation screen.

also if i try to go to disk utilities just after displaying "gathering disk informaiton" it will give me an error message and then it will hang as well. The message says " disk utility started, but a background process needed in disk utility didnt start properly. please quit and restart disk utility"

I suspect its got to do with the hard drive...

 

[Darwin]

if i do a reinstall how will i know that it will archieve my previous installation?

also i just tried to boot off the dvd but it will hang after i press continue on the fsecond installation screen.

also if i try to go to disk utilities just after displaying "gathering disk informaiton" it will give me an error message and then it will hang as well. The message says " disk utility started, but a background process needed in disk utility didnt start properly. please quit and restart disk utility"

I suspect its got to do with the hard drive...

When doing a reinstall you select the option to archive the previous system.

The second installation screen if I remember will scan the hard drives it can detect, so you are right that the hanging is connected to the hard drive.

Since the iBook has one hard drive, which now is Windows formatted something like the bootloader and hard drive information is now unreadable. Being PowerPC system it's not accustomed to having to deal with a such a format.

If you were able to use target disk mode without too much problems that might have to be your method of attack. Remove the files that you need from the drive and attempt to erase the hard drive back to a Mac format.