powerbook G4 wont turn on

[murphs73]

Hi,

A newbie here.
1yr old G4 powerbook. When i try to turn it on i get a grey screen and thats it. This has happened out of the blue. I dont even get the Apple icon!

Have tried turning on with option button depressed. I get blue screen with a refresh icon on the left and a right arrow on the right. The cursor is the old mac watch which eventually stops and teh screen is frozen.

I have inserted the Mac OSX install disks and tried starting with C depressed. I now get to the re-install screen which freezes as soon as i choose the language i want.

I dont know what else to try other than call in an expert.
This is my first MAC and if this is it bust after 1year is pretty um-impressive!
Any ideas?
THANKS!

 

[Ric]

Hi there and welcome,

sorry for the delay...

What version of OS X have you got ?

Are there any scratches on the install disk ?

regards

Ric

 

[murphs73]

Argh...apologies for the 'short' post. I am at my wits end with this. Today my mac showed some life. It now recognises the drive but posts the following error when i run the hardware test:

2STF/3/3:ATA - 100 ata - 6 - Master

Attempts to repair the disk via disk utility fail. Invalid nodes found.

Is the drive truely dead or can it be resusitated?

Thanks.

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

generally speaking "Invalid Nodes" = dead or dying drive.

Use something like DataRescue II to recover the data if needed, then you can try and reformat the drive. If it's successfull then make sure you keep your backups up to date just in case the drive does fail...

Sometimes, Disk Warrior or similar may be able to repair the drive, Apple's Disk Utility isn't as good as it could be...

regards

Ric