PB G4 Ti boot up problems (noob)

[seansea]

Hi:
I'm new to Macs and if this is in the wrong forum I apologize. A few days ago I noticed that the clock on the top of the screen kept stopping. Whenever I tried to reset the time I wasn't able to do so. And although the clock at the top of the screen was frozen, the date and time was correct in the Clock/Date box.

The bigger problem now, is that when I try to start up it freezes at the white screen with the Apple icon. I looked through a similar thread and followed the steps to safe boot (power, command + s). Alththough I got the screen to come up so I can type in the prompt, my keyboard is unresponsive. I even used an air duster and nothing changed.

I got this as payment for an art job I did, but this computer is a few years old, and I'm sure the warranty has long expired. I think I got cheated and am now stuck with a dying/dead Mac.

 

[Ric]

Hi there and welcome,

what version of OS software is your Mac running ?

Do you have any System disks ?

regards

Ric

 

[seansea]

Hi Ric

Thanks for responding. I'm running Mac OSX 10.0.3. I do have That disk along with all the other startup discs as well.

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

if you have everything important backed up I would be tempted to wipe the drive and reinstall the OS.

The fact that the computer is 'used' I would wipe everything off and reinstall the OS, that way you know that everything is ok.

Then you will be starting afresh and you will know that the problems you are experiencing are not software and we can then check the hardware...

regards

Ric

 

[seansea]

Thanks Ric!

I was afraird it would come down to that. I'll try it and let you know what happens. Thanks again for helping out I really appreciate it.

 

[seansea]

I'm at the point now where I'm willing to lose everything and reinstall, but I can't even do that. The keypad won't let me type in anything to run fsck, and evne when I hold down C and insert my System Restore discs it fails to do anything. Do you think the harddrive is dead? I'm lost

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

are you sure you have the right disks ?

If c doesn't work try and hold down the option key whilst rebooting to see if that brings up the boot choice screen...

Even if the hard drive was dead the Mac would boot from the cd...

Have you had any cd's in the drive before ? Do you know if the cd drive works ?

regards

Ric

 

[seansea]

I'm pretty sure they are the right discs, and I've never had problems with discs before. I may be trying in the wrong order though. I have a Mac OS 9 disc, Powerbook G4 Hardware Test, Software Restore, Systems Restore discs 1 - 3, and a Mac OS X disc. I'm assuming Id have to install OS 9 before I can 10. Could that be the problem?

Until I fix this I can only check the forums while I'm at work. I'll try the option key and see what happens. Thanks again for working with me to solve this.

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

try the disk that say's System Restore Disk 1

OS 9 can be installed after OS X. If this disk boots...then don't install...see if you can go to the menu bar and run Disk Utility and then run a repair disk and a repair permissions...if this doesn't work then we will have to do a "Archive & Install".

regards

Ric

 

[seansea]

Update:
I inserted the 1st System Rsetore disc and held down the option key. A blue screen came up with my HD icon and the disc's icon next to it. There was also a refresh key and a forward button. I made suer the disc icon was selected and clicked the forward button. A gray screen appeares with the smiling Mac icon and then the Mac OS logo came up with the loading bar at the bottom.

I box then appeared That was labeled ASR. I was not able to select my hard drive, and the restore button was dimmed. in the destination disk box was the following:

"The disc "Power Mac G4 Restore CD is the configuration source disk and cannot be restored. Please click Switch Disk/Switch Device to select another disk."

I tried to switch to the hard drive and:

"This configuration is not supported on this computer."

I forgot to mention yesterday that when I tried using the Mac OS X disc I got the following prompt:

"The Installer has unecpectedly quit (error 1). Press return to restart computer".

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to make sure you had all the information. Thanks!

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

it sounds from your post that the internal hard drive is not being 'seen'...

The other disk that you have the Mac OS X disk, what happens if you try and boot from that ?

regards

Ric

 

[seansea]

It say's the Installer "unexpectedly quit" and asks if I want to restart.