Please Help! (iBook 600 G3 crashes and has boot trouble)

[MacSlurp]

I am lost here..
Today my computer started acting weird. I was on a forum I frequent and trying to attach a file to my post and then the whole browser crashes.
I tried again same thing, so I thought ok maybe something in Safari is quirky.. so I tried it in Firefox.... same deal.

Sooo I then decided to restart my computer .. it took a long time to shut it down and kept telling me applications where preventing it from closing.
I force quit my apps.. and then manually shut the computer down as it was not responsive.

Then I restarted.. but it took several seconds before I heard that "chime" I got to the screen with the apple and the the mac version of an hour glass and it sat and sat...
it did nothing.. just kept spinning that little circle.

I shut it down and tried again.. then it freezes on that spinning little circle/hourglass thing.

I am sooooo stumped I am hoping this is not serious.. I do not know how to load it in safe mode like windows has or anything.. I am a year into mac and have never had a problem like this at all!

Is there a way to get the machine to start?


The machine in question is a ibook 600 G3 it is currenty running Tiger and has the max ram configuration.

 

[mad jew]

Can you boot from the OSX discs? If so, try using the bundled Disk Utility to verify and possibly repair your hard drive. You can boot into Safe Mode (slightly different to Windows' Safe Mode) by holding SHIFT at startup, however I'm not sure it'll necessarily help here. What apps were you running before this started happening? Do you have any peripherals plugged in?

 

[MacSlurp]

Can you boot from the OSX discs? If so, try using the bundled Disk Utility to verify and possibly repair your hard drive. You can boot into Safe Mode (slightly different to Windows' Safe Mode) by holding SHIFT at startup, however I'm not sure it'll necessarily help here. What apps were you running before this started happening? Do you have any peripherals plugged in?

I do not have any disks

I tried the shift key it had zero effect

 

[mad jew]

Try getting hold of some then, 'cause I think you'll need 'em. In the meantime, try running fsck from Single User Mode. Good luck mate.