iBook G4 Boot Problems

[austin_colby]

I came across an Apple iBook G4 the other day and unfortunately am not able to get it to boot. My uncle said that it was working fine and then one day it wouldn't go any further past the apple logo. So far I have reset the PRAM, PRU and also ran the hardware check. I am not too familiar with Macs (MCSE and A+ certification) but I have another iBook that runs great. Here is a list of what I have tried so far...

1. Tried a standard boot (gets to apple logo and then appears to freeze)

2. Attempted to reload Mac OSX (gets to the "Select Installation Destination" but there is not hard drive listed.

3. Booted with holding the "T" key, it brought a weird looking "Y" and a battery indicator... Not apparently what I was looking for...

4. Ran Apple Hardware test v2.2 and test passed completely

5. Booted using "option" button depressed, then I selected the hard drive (which has the OSX "X" in the bottom right hand corner... It went to the Apple logo and then turned into a circle with a slash through it.

I am stumped, even though I searched all the forum and tried as many possibilities as I could... Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks!
-Austin

 

[austin_colby]

Solution to the problem from my eyes...

I believe what happened is the hard drive was unmounted and from that point it would no longer read the OS. I ran the disk utility and erased the hard drive. I also chose to write zeros just to make sure that everything was gone. Ran the install again and attempted to boot into OSX. It was still trying to boot to the old partition so I reset the PRAM. After that everything seemed to work fine. Now all I need is OS 10.4... I didn't realize that the laptop came with 10.3....