iBook G4 not starting up

[flipian]

There was a post in "System" that I replied to about this, but thought maybe it should be here instead. (please feel free correct me if I'm wrong). :confused:

I've got an iBook G4 that just today started having an issue. It completely refuses to startup. I've tried booting in Safe Mode, I tried resetting the power management unit, I even started using Verbose Mode (a suggestion from the other thread). Still nothing.

When I first startup, the computer does the chime, then I have a fairly prolonged view of the finder with a ?, then it goes on to the Apple Logo with the spinning wheel. That's as far as it gets and there is no indication from the machine that it intends to go on. (I'd like it to send me a letter saying that maybe sometime next week it'll start up :cool: )

I've got stuff on the HD that I need. Should I be trying to boot from the disc? Should I try to access the HD to back everything up?
I'm a self-proclaimed newb, so go easy on me if this is an easy issue.

[giskard22]

It does sound plausible that your HD is having problems. I would not keep attempting to boot from it. The best thing would be to boot from a Firewire-based disk and try to grab the files you need. Then you can see whether there are just volume catalog issues that need repair or whether the disk is actually failing.

[flipian]

Will I still be able to access the machine if I connect via firewire to another mac? What I mean is, do you think I'll still be able to start up in the "networked" mode even though it doesn't start up normally?

I really only need one file off of the machine then it can crash all it wants.

The weird thing is, it happened after I did the new security install. It just looks like that screwed it up. I just don't understand....I guess iTunes downloaded too. Does anyone know of any issues with that?

[giskard22]

In Target Disk Mode, it's running entirely off hard-coded software in the computer's firmware. The OS on the HD is irrelevant. Unless the disk's catalog (or the disk itself) is pretty badly damaged, you should be able to copy one file without using special software.

It's not likely that the security update itself caused it. However, if there were already disk catalog issues, installing updates is often enough to make the problem kill the OS.

[George Cassello]

The weird thing is, it happened after I did the new security install. It just looks like that screwed it up. I just don't understand....I guess iTunes downloaded too. Does anyone know of any issues with that?

The same thing has just happened to me! I'm thinking it has something to do with the updates. Sounds like we both did the same updates to our machines. I don't know what to do. Have you figured your out yet?