Hi, this is probably my first post so bear with me. My Dual USB 700Mhz iBook has been stuck on the boot screen with that rotating status circle for the better part of 8 hours. I got home today to find that it was frozen. I say frozen because I could move the mouse around but I couldn't actually click on anything. So then I manually restarted the computer and it's been stuck since. I've already had the logic board repaired once, and I don't think that's the problem. Programs that were open: Adium and iTunes. OS: Panther. I'm networked with a PC sharing a DSL connection. My step-mom has this nasty habit of turning off the modem (SBC tech support guy said that it's a good thing to do) and Adium usually freaks out when she disconnects the modem. I'm not very tech-savvy, but by freaking out I mean, I hear crackling noises from my iBook and I get that spinning beachball for about 5 minutes. Has anyone ever had this problem? Or know what the problem might be? Thanks for you help in advance.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Stuck on Boot Screen
- Thread starter trife life
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You hear crackling noises? That's never a good sign. As far as being frozen at the boot screen, have you tried starting it up from the OS X install CD's?
so maybe "crackling" is a bad choice of words... you know that sound your computer makes when it's swapping pages on the drive? well, it's like that, but a bit amplified when it unexpectedly loses it's network connection. is there a way to force it to boot? because I lost my OS discs during my move.
Repair Permissions. You can do that by shutting it down (press and hold power button) and then start up the iBook with the Panther CD in there. Insert the CD as it is starting up. Press and hold the 'C' key. If that won't work, you may need to shutdown and restart while holding 'C' again. Holding the 'C' key, BTW, tells the computer to search and attempt to start from a CD.
Go to the Installer menu, and choose Disk Utility. Repair Disk Permissions, then Repair Disk. See if it starts from the internal HD then.
Go to the Installer menu, and choose Disk Utility. Repair Disk Permissions, then Repair Disk. See if it starts from the internal HD then.
Praise cheeses that did it! Thanks alot guys! I've learned that I'm wayYyYy too close to my Mac...life is HARD w/o it!
HARD DRIVE FAILURE
I guess one thing that'd prevent your mac from booting is the inevitably bad hard drive failure. According to Disk Repair: "The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)". I haven't tried yet, but will I be able to erase my disk and re-install Panther? I really don't want to, but it's seems like my only choice here. I have 22 gigs of important stuff that I now wished I had backed up. Is it too late to back up the drive? If not, how can I do it?
I guess one thing that'd prevent your mac from booting is the inevitably bad hard drive failure. According to Disk Repair: "The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)". I haven't tried yet, but will I be able to erase my disk and re-install Panther? I really don't want to, but it's seems like my only choice here. I have 22 gigs of important stuff that I now wished I had backed up. Is it too late to back up the drive? If not, how can I do it?
Many times, even if you screw up by not running Disk First Aid or fsck before you start having boot problems -- there's still a good chance of recovering the data by simply booting from another drive and copying the stuff off.
Or running a 3rd party drive repair utility -- always worth a try (basically anything but Norton for OS X.)
So at least try to save the data, it's usually still there unless you really trash the file system/catalog drive really bad.
If you can get the drive to mount and look at the file names -- you can usually save the files that didn't get corrupted.
---
Of course once you trash the file system/catalog and Disk First Aid/fsck/3rd Party stuff cannot repair it -- it's best to format the drive before reloading the OS.
Or running a 3rd party drive repair utility -- always worth a try (basically anything but Norton for OS X.)
So at least try to save the data, it's usually still there unless you really trash the file system/catalog drive really bad.
If you can get the drive to mount and look at the file names -- you can usually save the files that didn't get corrupted.
---
Of course once you trash the file system/catalog and Disk First Aid/fsck/3rd Party stuff cannot repair it -- it's best to format the drive before reloading the OS.
trife life said:I guess one thing that'd prevent your mac from booting is the inevitably bad hard drive failure. According to Disk Repair: "The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)". I haven't tried yet, but will I be able to erase my disk and re-install Panther? I really don't want to, but it's seems like my only choice here. I have 22 gigs of important stuff that I now wished I had backed up. Is it too late to back up the drive? If not, how can I do it?
Can you read the drive if you boot off of something else? Like install OS X onto your iPod and then see if you can boot and read the HD?