Deleted System folder in IBook G4 Acidentally

[katsumoriyama]

I recently purchased a refurbished IBook G4 from the Mac Authority store. It has Mac OS X Tiger 10.43, or something like that I believe. It worked fine until my brother accidentally deleted the "system" folder when he was having trouble getting it to work....

Now when you turn the computer on the Mac startup sound is heard. The backlight does not come on, but if you hold the macbook up to a bright lamp you can see an error screen that does not make much sense. Can someone help me with this problem?

 

[SpankMarvin]

This is a long shot, and requires either another mac or a drive with a fully working system on it...

Connect a firewire cable between macs. Switch on your broken mac whilst holding down the t button, to launch in target disk mode.

Boot up the working mac. You should be able to see your broken mac's disk icon on the desktop.

Use software such as IceClean (freeware) to view hidden files and folders. This is essential.

Once you can see hidden files, go to your broken drive > Users > yourname (i.e. the home folder of the user who was logged in when the trashing happened) > .Trash

In the trash folder, you should see your system folder. Restore it to the root of the drive.

shut everything down, disconnect, reboot broken mac, cross fingers.

Let me know if it works!

Good luck

J

 

[katsumoriyama]

thanks alot man, i did it today and it works now.

great solution btw

 

[SpankMarvin]

Hey glad it worked!

P.S. I'd clone yer drive from now on (using disk utility or Carbon Copy Cloner) to save headaches in future!

John