ibook g4 wont finnish starting

[cookytrix]

when i bush the start button the normal chime rings, fan blows, apple screen comes up with the little spinning dial, then the blue screen with the mac os z box and the blue progress bar. the bar fills up in about 30 seconds and just stays that way. well the screen dims if you let it sit for a while like normal. i did the cntrl, opt, shift, power thing. to reset. nothing new happened when rebooted. tried the single user start to check for errors and reboot. i dont know what to look for in that field though. the ibook is last years model. 12" it just didnt want to start one day.
dont know what else to say.
cooky

 

[rpphoto]

when i bush the start button the normal chime rings, fan blows, apple screen comes up with the little spinning dial, then the blue screen with the mac os z box and the blue progress bar. the bar fills up in about 30 seconds and just stays that way. well the screen dims if you let it sit for a while like normal. i did the cntrl, opt, shift, power thing. to reset. nothing new happened when rebooted. tried the single user start to check for errors and reboot. i dont know what to look for in that field though. the ibook is last years model. 12" it just didnt want to start one day.
dont know what else to say.
cooky

Try restarting with the OS installer disk. When it opens, find Disk Utility in the menus and try repairing the disk. Hope that helps.

 

[zeyhra]

Few suggestions in addition to rpphoto...
Disconnect any peripherals, eject any disks...

And have you tried restarting it in verbose mode (command-v)... that tells you what it's doing as it starts up... if it's hanging on something it should show up there...

 

[cookytrix]

put the disc in at start up once. then tried again another time when it was far as it would go in start up. nothing happens.

and in verbose mode(apple/v/start?) it says;

can't exec getty ' /system / library/coreservices/loginwindow.app/contents/macos/loginwindow' for port /dev/console: exec format error

every 30 seconds it prints out another line of this on the screen

 

[zeyhra]

Start from the CD again, and go to Disk Utilities on the CD... run the repair disk and repair disk permissions from there... then restart in verbose again to see if you get stuck at that line again... that line where it's getting stuck is the key to the problem... if it's still hanging at that line, assuming you don't have any other repair utilities like DiskWarrior, my suggestion is to do an archive and install from the disks... this will preserve all your apps, settings and data...

One important note... you definitely need to be careful with the install... make sure you don't hit anything that talks about formatting... that would be bad... assuming you don't have a back-up, you'd lose everything on your computer... go with the archive and install and you'll be fine though...

 

[cookytrix]

Start from the CD again, and go to Disk Utilities on the CD... run the repair disk and repair disk permissions from there... then restart in verbose again to see if you get stuck at that line again... that line where it's getting stuck is the key to the problem... if it's still hanging at that line, assuming you don't have any other repair utilities like DiskWarrior, my suggestion is to do an archive and install from the disks... this will preserve all your apps, settings and data...

One important note... you definitely need to be careful with the install... make sure you don't hit anything that talks about formatting... that would be bad... assuming you don't have a back-up, you'd lose everything on your computer... go with the archive and install and you'll be fine though...

i wrote befor that the disk does nothing. it does the same as tthe first time i wrote. maybe i put it in at the wrong time. ive inserted it befor , durring, snd after booting

 

[zeyhra]

Have you installed any new hardware or software recently?

Did you add RAM or anything else at any point?

What OS is on it? What OS disks are you trying to boot from (10.3.x, 10.4.x)? The ones that came with the computer or upgrade disks?

Are you putting the CD in, restarting and immidiately holding down the C key? Before you hear chimes or anything? If you're doing that and still getting no further than partway through the blue bar, it's not reading from the CD...

Try restarting, with CD in (no other peripherals attached) and before you hear chimes or anything hold down the option key... keep holding it for a while... you should get a screen that is blue but shows all available boot disks...

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

you can also try starting up holding down the command + s keys this will boot you into single user mode...

Once it comes up follow the instructions that come up to run FSCK...

You screen will say something like this:

If you want to make modifications to Files:

/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /

If you wish to boot the system, but stay in single user mode:

sh /etc/rc

localhost:/root#


When you see the bottom line type in:

/sbin/mount -uw /

then press return. This mounts the drive.

Then type:

rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist

Then press return.

This removes the Login window preferences..which may be corrupt.

Then type:

reboot

Then press return.

regards

Ric

 

[cookytrix]

tried ric's idea. seemed to do nothing.


and zehhra. holding the c got the disk to work. i repaired the prrmissions. rebooted and nothing different.

and no, i havent installed anything to the ibook.
its a mac OS X 10.4.
is there anything else i can do in disk mode?
i got the blue sceen with the option key/start.......then what?


thanx a lot yall

 

[zeyhra]

I'd recommend doing the archive and install from your OS 10.4 disks then... you'd put it in and hold the c key down to boot from the disk...
When the Installer appears, follow the onscreen instructions to install Mac OS X until you get to the screen that asks you to select a volume to install to.
Select your hard disk, then click Options.
In the resulting dialog, select Archive and Install.
Select the volume that already has Mac OS X installed on it (unless you've done any partitioning you'll just have the one volume).
Select "Preserve Users and Network Settings" to keep all network data and Home directory settings, then click OK.
Click Continue to start the installation.
Once the Installer finishes the installation and you've restarted your computer, you may need to reconfigure a few things. Look in the Previous Systems folder that was created during the Archive and Install process, and compare it to your current System folder. If anything is missing, you can move the files over. If any applications don't work as expected after doing an Archive and Install, you may need to reinstall them (I've seen a few apps that need to be reinstalled after an archive and install... particularly font management utilities).

One question... since you still don't know the cause of the problem (and it would be nice to figure it out so it doesn't inadvertently happen again)... did you (or anyone else) add or remove any fonts from any of the fonts folders on your machine?

 

[cookytrix]

yeah. that did it. and no i nor anyone else has installed or uninstalled anything to this computer. we just use it for music basically for the moment. haven't even added any tunes to it for a while. my roommate unplugged it and brought it downstairs, plugged it back in and said it wouldn't fully boot. shes out of town for a while so i didn't get details. i will when she returns.

so now do i delete one of the system folders. one has an X on the folder named system. the other with no X is called previous systems. if i just created one why is it a previous system? dont i want to use it.? im an idiot i know. im learning though.
the only difference i found so far is the cache folder of the new one had 3 extra files. im not done looking though.
i move files from previous system to system right?
so yeah do i delete the old or new or none of these system files now?

oh yeah, when i was configuring or whatever i just did. it said it needed 4gb or so to do the process. and i didnt have it. so i had to remove some things from the installation. i think i remove a lot. like the printer and fax stuff and the programs(the last option it gave). had to or i wouldnt know how else to manage the task. so this would make the 2 system folders much different right?
could he initial problem have been i overloaded the HD?
thank you so much for your awesome help.
CT

 

[zeyhra]

You're welcome for the help... glad it got it up and running!

It's doubtful that overloading the HD caused the initial problem... unless your roommate was getting some message that the HD was full and threw out files without realizing they were files critical to operation...

The folder called "Previous System" is your old system that wouldn't boot... you can move stuff from this folder to the corresponding places in the current System folder, to a point... the less you move, the better in terms of the new system being clean... you'll want to check your Previous system folder for anything you don't have in the current system folder, but as far as preferences and things like that go, it's generally better to let the current system take care of rebuilding all that... Preferences are the most common source of problems...

Once you're fairly satisfied that you've retrieved everything you want/need from the Previous system folder, I suggest backing up the Previous system folder to CD or external drive and deleting it from your hard drive (since space seems to be an issue for you)... that way if you find you're missing something critical you can retrieve it... after you've run the computer for a couple weeks without needing to retrieve anything you can delete the backed up version of the Previous system folder...

 

[cookytrix]

understood.
thanx again buddy.
CT

 

[zeyhra]

No problem... glad I could help...
-z