Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Okay, what was that?

S

shakespeare

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 29, 2002
294
0
Portland, Maine
A very bizarre thing happened to my PowerBook G4 last night....

It froze up on me, which it hardly ever does, so that I had to do a force-restart. When it restarted, it made its little startup beep, and then wouldn't start up; all I got was a grey screen for a really long time. I restarted from the AppleCare Diagnostics CD and tried to run TechTool to see if anything was wrong with my hard drives, but the damn thing didn't realize the hard drives were even there! It was as if the only disc attached to the computer was the AppleCare CD. AppleCare's tech support line was closed, so I went to bed, figuring I'd figure it out in the morning.

When I got up, my computer was restarted into OS X and operating entirely normally!

What the hell was that? Or maybe I should count my blessings and ask not from whence they come....

The Muse of Apple was smiling upon me....
 
This happened to my Powerbook once, in the middle of the night, but I was too tired to see what was actually was going wrong, next morning I booted it up and it came straight into Mac OS X.1 no problems!

It must be summut to do with the night!

Ensign
 
It's happened to me twice!

Yeah, my PowerBook froze on me twice when I was playing some music and doing some writing on Word. I would then force restart it, and when it was turned on again, it had this gray screen with no indication of activity. I would leave it alone for awhile, and--viola!--everything was in perfect working condition! It's been about two months since the incidents, and nothing has happened since. Strange . . . :confused:
 
Alpha doesn't believe me but:

It really doesn't like having two bootable systems on the same volume. Back everything up and partition a small (1-3Gb) volume for OS9 and your utilities.

Don't forget to back up as re-formatting will kill all your data.:eek:
 
yep....I've had problems before having OS9 and OSX on the same volume...usually after resetting the pram
 
I started this thread.

No, in fact, I had already partitioned my hard drive into two volumes, one for OS X 10.1.4 and another for 9.2.2.

Just a freak thing, I guess!
 
Back your system up, now. I have had a similar thing happen to me a few times. Once or twice I've lost everything on my disk a day later. :(

One thing to note is that PowerBooks will simply not start up if they are too cold. (Same deal for desktops, but it is less common). I've been freaked out by that more than a couple of times, until I read the operating temperatures on the Apple site.
 
it sounds like you may have a loose connection from the IDE cable to your hard drive. something like that would cause your problem in a heart beat. sometimes things don't get screwed/pushed/slammed/etc in all the way or become loose in shipping. if you are near an Apple Store have them check it out at the Genius Bar.
 
Originally posted by Beej
Back your system up, now. I have had a similar thing happen to me a few times. Once or twice I've lost everything on my disk a day later. :(

One thing to note is that PowerBooks will simply not start up if they are too cold. (Same deal for desktops, but it is less common). I've been freaked out by that more than a couple of times, until I read the operating temperatures on the Apple site.
Click to expand...

Doesn't everyone keep an active backup? My computers are backuped every other night. I might start a thread about this.

Ensign
 
Originally posted by Ensign Paris
Doesn't everyone keep an active backup? My computers are backuped every other night. I might start a thread about this.
Click to expand...

Please do start a thread about it. I back things up occasionally by burning CD's, but I'd love to know if there are better ways.

Thanks, Sparkleytone, I think I will take it to the store in Peabody. One of the rubber feet came off and the two little rubber cushions for when the monitor is closed are disintegrating; do you think they'd fix that, too?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back