Hi peoples of MacRumors - I have a problem that's been going on for a long time now and well my Powerbook G4+ is stuck on a flashing folder that shows the Finder logo. I have tried the alt/option key boot which leads me to 2 buttons - which do absolutely nothing. I also don't have the Os X disk because I bought this laptop second-hand so yeah. I don't want to go to Apple or the Genius Bar because I believe it costs money as my laptop does not have warranty and it's no longer supported by Apple. Thanks.
What this means is that the Mac cannot find a system folder to boot from. That presents three possibilities.
1. Already mentioned, a non-bootable CD-DVD stuck in the drive
2. A missing/moved System folder or a renamed boot disk
3. A bad hard drive
On boot, the Mac searches for whatever boot disks it can find. Technically, if it finds a non-bootable disk in the CD/DVD drive it should move on and boot from the hard drive. If it can find no bootable disks, you get the flashing question mark folder.
I don't rule out #1, but I think it unlikely. But check anyway. My money would be on number 3 because you say you can't do anything. That to me indicates that you are seeing NO bootable drives when your hold down the OPTN key when booting. If you had a bootable hard disk with no issues it should be listed there as bootable. I don't think number 2 is likely unless the drive was at some point mounted on another Mac and either the system folder moved or deleted or the drive renamed from that Mac.
So, the question then becomes, is there a hard drive installed? And if so, it's probably bad and needs to be replaced. Which means you are going to need to get install disks to reinstall the OS on to a new hard drive.
Turning to Apple. You are correct that it's out of warranty. However, it won't cost you any money to have them look at it. It only costs for repair and you have to authorize them to do that.
Depending on the genius you may get one who will/can look at it for you, or one who has no freaking clue and since it's out of warranty won't touch it. But either way, both types of genius will not offer any repair options to you. The only thing they may do, is give you a business card for a third party Apple repair shop.
I had one genius who was nice enough to locate some case screws for me and give them to me free of charge, but for the most part they won't even look at my laptops now.
BTW, what's a G4+? All I've ever heard of was PowerBook G4 or PowerMac G4.
