Oh God Help...dead iBook!!!!!

[Metatron]

HELP PLEASE!!!!! I have no idea what is wrong with my iBook. I have years of expeiance working on PC's but Apple's? I will start at the top. One oh so faithful day I thought that is would be a good idea to open up my iBook to se about repalcing the Hard Drive with the faster and bigger 40gig, ibm 5400rpm 9.5mm drive. Well I opened it up..took it completey apart and studied the layout carefully...(just for the record, I have taken apart and fixed many, many PC laptops and repaired them with no problem, but i do not have the softwear tools to find out what is wrong with my mac). I decided that the upgraded could be done cheaply and correctly. I put it back together..(with no left over screws, i must have taken out 30+) and turned it on. It ran fine for about 3 days....then................GOD smited me. I noticed the problem when my computer froze. I could move the mouse, and the mouse turned into that spinning cd, but moved. I would click on something else and it took forever to changed screens....like 2 mins. Then is would stall again. And when i quit the app. it ran fine. Then it got worse. When i would go to install a app. it would freeze everytime it did a disk check before installing and took 15 mins. for it to unfreeze and start to install...(let me remind you that the system never crashed, just stalled like it was thinking, but was lost or daydreaming). Then it got even more worse. It would stall on booting OSX and it took forever for it to go to the logon screen. My solutions were.............
1) I did a hardwear test with the CD apple gave me...
- it passed with no problems
2) I wiped the harddrive and reinstalled the OS.
- it installed but then when it went to boot would no go any
futher then the blue screen after the os load, but before the
boot screen.
3) Instead of doing the OS instal myself, I used the Softwear
Restore CD's..all 4.
- it completly installed the CD's but at the end it falled the
checksum and said the restore falied.
4) I ran the disk utility to verify the disk (used to osx install cd)
- it said that it was alright

So what does that mean...the computer will boot cd's and work great. IT will install the os but not fully boot them. The hardwear tests all passed. My only clue as to what the problem might be is the sound it makes when it stalls.

 

[Metatron]

Oh God Help...dead iBook!!!!!

HELP PLEASE!!!!! I have no idea what is wrong with my iBook. I have years of expeiance working on PC's but Apple's? I will start at the top. One oh so faithful day I thought that is would be a good idea to open up my iBook to se about repalcing the Hard Drive with the faster and bigger 40gig, ibm 5400rpm 9.5mm drive. Well I opened it up..took it completey apart and studied the layout carefully...(just for the record, I have taken apart and fixed many, many PC laptops and repaired them with no problem, but i do not have the softwear tools to find out what is wrong with my mac). I decided that the upgraded could be done cheaply and correctly. I put it back together..(with no left over screws, i must have taken out 30+) and turned it on. It ran fine for about 3 days....then................GOD smited me. I noticed the problem when my computer froze. I could move the mouse, and the mouse turned into that spinning cd, but moved. I would click on something else and it took forever to changed screens....like 2 mins. Then is would stall again. And when i quit the app. it ran fine. Then it got worse. When i would go to install a app. it would freeze everytime it did a disk check before installing and took 15 mins. for it to unfreeze and start to install...(let me remind you that the system never crashed, just stalled like it was thinking, but was lost or daydreaming). Then it got even more worse. It would stall on booting OSX and it took forever for it to go to the logon screen. My solutions were.............
1) I did a hardwear test with the CD apple gave me...
- it passed with no problems
2) I wiped the harddrive and reinstalled the OS.
- it installed but then when it went to boot would no go any
futher then the blue screen after the os load, but before the
boot screen.
3) Instead of doing the OS instal myself, I used the Softwear
Restore CD's..all 4.
- it completly installed the CD's but at the end it falled the
checksum and said the restore falied.
4) I ran the disk utility to verify the disk (used to osx install cd)
- it said that it was alright

So what does that mean...the computer will boot cd's and work great. IT will install the os but not fully boot them. The hardwear tests all passed. My only clue as to what the problem might be is the sound it makes when it stalls. It makes this clicking sound in a pattern and if it is looking for a file but cannot find it. It is alost like when you put a scratched cd in your system, you can read the disk, parts of it...even see the name of the damaged files, but you can not read from it. And when you click on it, it just starts spinning and never opens, even freezing the system for a short time.

So my only conclusion is that the Hard Drive is damaged in places on the disk. Can anyone confirm that this is probably it. If so i will just do the 40 gig upgraded and kill two birds with one stone. Is there a program for apple like windozes MS scandisk that marks damaged parts on my HD so that the os will not write on it. Please any help is needed. ANY!

Thanks!

 

[beez7777]

ouch, sorry to hear this. Have you tried putting the old hard drive back in? I cant think of much else, like you, i dont have much experience with mac repairs (i am a recent switcher) but do have much with pc repair. Sorry i cant be more helpful. Oh, and the correct spelling is software/hardware (Not trying to be a jerk, just helpin out)

 

[LimeiBook86]

WHAT KIND OF iBOOK DO YOU HAVE? Is it in colors? (blueberry,graphite,tangerine,keylime?) Or is it just silver?
I have a Key Lime iBook. Do you have a good amount of RAM, The original iBooks (the colored ones) came with 32MB of RAM(the very first ones) then later on they came with 64MB of RAM. Mac OS X requires at least 128MB of RAM but recomends 256 MB of RAM. I know when I had my iBook it ran slow and stalled but now that my iBook has 320MB of RAM (thats the maxium amount for the old color iBooks) it runs just fine! Also It might be something wrong with the Hard Drive sometimes the programs don't pick up a minor flaw. And that minor flaw can cause problems, this happened on my old PowerPook DUO 230. Well, try calling Apple Computer about this, or look on thier webpage. (www.apple.com)

What version of Mac OS X are you putting on your iBook? example ( 10.0, 10.1, 10.2) To find out what version you are running, go to the Apple Menu in mac OS X and click on "About this Mac"
Please say what type of iBook you have,how big was the original Hard Drive? does it have DVD or CD-ROM? Is is 366mhz or 466mhz? Is it a Special Edition with FireWire(like mine) Please tell, if you don't know, open your Hard Drive, open your Mac OS X's "Applications" folder, then open the "Utilities" folder inside it, there should be a program in called "Apple Sytem Profiler" Open that and you can look up your MHZ, system bus, memory, ect. There are tabs at the top of the program's window. One of them sats "Devices and Volumes", when you click that tab a new window will load, the new window will tell you your internal HD space and what kind of CD drive you have. I hope this helps! you might have to poke around in "Apple System Profiler" to find exactly what you need to know. Bye, and good luck

 

[dnte42]

I recently had the same sort of problem with my hard drive (re: the clicking). It turned out to be a software issue (I have no idea what, but that was the apparent reason that it checked out fine in hardware tests), and seemed to work fine after I booted from a FireWire drive (in other words, the clicking/loading mysteriously stopped). I immediately backed up the drive and wiped it. It has done ok ever since. It is hard to say if this could be your problem or not (I would guess no, if you have wiped it) but this sort of thing can be software caused also...

In conclusion...there really isn't one.

 

[Gus]

When you re-installed, did you zero all data? Maybe this would help you out. Of course, you will lose everything on the drive. Do you have Firewire? If so, find another Firewire Mac and backup all of your data through FireWire Target Disk mode (on startup hold down the Apple key and "T"), save your old data, and try to zero all data on the problematic drive. I'm not sure this will work, but it's worth a try I think.

For procedures with hard drive installation for the iBook, look at MCE's website. A great source.

Gus

 

[Metatron]

let me clarify!!

My ibook is 500mhz, 128 ram, dual usb, firwire, combo drive. The hard drive is 10 gig. I have not yet put in the or bought the 40 gig. disk. I am scared that I will just lose the 200 dollars if it is not a damage hard drive. I have partitioned tie drive many times. I installed mac os 9. IT would install, start to boot then...click click click. Nothing more. I the reformated and partitioned, installed os 10.0, it installed, started to boot then...click click click. The same results whe I tried the install of 10.1 and a complete software restore with the 4 cd's provided. As long as I do not run off of the HD there is no problem. I think it is the HD. Like I said earlier, I can boot the cd and then run a hd verify. when i do the hd clicks for a moment then continues the verify and passes. Can it be that there are damaged parts on the HD so when it writes to disk it writes on the disk but the cannot read it. It would explain why i can install the OS's but not boot them. I have an old 9.5mm compaq hd, 2.5 gig. Would it be okay if I put this hd in and tested to see if it was the hard drive. Just for a test, if it worked I know that I would have to just buy a new hd. Again, is there any apple program that like MS Scandisk that scans the HD for damaged sectors and marks them not to be used.

Any help is helpful, Joshua.

 

[GeeYouEye]

Are you SURE the issue is the HD? I had something like this happen on a PC a while back. I seem to remember that the cause was badly installed RAM, and a simple reseating of the RAM fixed it. Did you happen to install RAM or an AirPort card right before the HD? As for the replacement HD test, that may work, but just install 9. That should be enough to tell what the problem is. Also, open it up and check the physical connection to the drive, and make sure all the pins are intact.

 

[Metatron]

I fixed it....ha ha ha

Not only did i fix it but what i thought was wrong was the problem. For anyone who has this problem in the future here is a solution to try to fix your problem.
1)use a 0S 9 software install cd and boot to os 9. Go to drive setup and then click on funtcions. Have the test test for bad blocks to confirm that it is a damaged hard drive.
2)Find out where the damage is at, and if possible how big it is. (everytime i did a hd test for bad blocks it would fail about 1/5 the way through saying that is was interupted....which let my know that about 1/5 of the way into my drive there was damage.
3)Guess and hope! partion your drive in 3 partions. For saftey I zoned out a gig for the damaged partion. 500mb on either side of where i hit the problem. I wanted to be safe.
4)install your os on the main partion. and change the format of the damage partion that way os x can not read it and you can not find it. and accidently store files in it.
5) what to do with that first small partition. - I put os 9 in it. -

I am glad to have this done. I am going to upgrade to the 40 gig now that i know that it was the hard drive. Anyway, I lost 1/10 of my space zoning out the damaged part of the drive.

Extra good thing. I took only 15 min. to install os 10.1 and my ibook is for some wired reason faster then it use to be. I use to click on the system pref. panel or ie and I would wait like 40 sec. For it to open. Now it takes laround 2. oh joy!!!!

Thanks for everyones input and trying to help me.