R6000CH

Q: Slow startup suddenly and OSX DVD won't mount either!

For some reason, my 15" PowerBook G4 on 10.5.8 is suddenly taking 6 minutes to boot. I zapped the PRAM and PMU, Onyx'd it, fixed permissions etc etc. The startup is maybe a tad quicker, but still much slower than before. Photoshop took a gazillion years to load too. I decided to boot from the Leopard DVD - that wouldn't have it either. The DVD just got spat out. Nothing wrong with it, no scratches etc - my wife couldn't load a normal music CD either.

Is this time to draw a veil over this mac?!

Powerbook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 1.67 GHz PowerPC G4 | 1Gb RAM

Posted on Mar 19, 2011 4:35 PM

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Q: Slow startup suddenly and OSX DVD won't mount either!

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  • by BGreg,Helpful

    BGreg BGreg Mar 20, 2011 5:53 AM in response to R6000CH
    Level 6 (17,522 points)
    Mar 20, 2011 5:53 AM in response to R6000CH
    Welcome to the Apple discussions.

    Do you have a bootable backup you can use? I'd want to at least run a repair disk on the internal hard drive.

    If you have either of the TechTool programs on your internal hard drive (in lieu of booting from DVD and running the Apple hardware test) run it.

    Have you brought up the console to see why the boot is taking so long?
  • by R6000CH,

    R6000CH R6000CH Mar 20, 2011 8:25 AM in response to BGreg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 20, 2011 8:25 AM in response to BGreg
    Hi thanks for the reply and the welcome! I don't have a bootable drive - I looked at my two drives full of data and don't fancy wiping that yet to create. I might grab a USB from work to try. Of course I don't have the capability of spinning a CD or DVD so would need to find a way of doing this.

    Console - hmmm - this scares me lots
  • by BGreg,

    BGreg BGreg Mar 20, 2011 8:59 AM in response to R6000CH
    Level 6 (17,522 points)
    Mar 20, 2011 8:59 AM in response to R6000CH
    Console - hmmm - this scares me lots


    Don't let it scare you. On your hard drive in applications/utilities you'll find console. Bring it up, click all messages on the left hand side. There are many logs kept, as you can see from the choices on the left side. So, let's go ... reboot your system. Come back and look at the messages after you reboot (use the time stamp) to see if there is something that is taking a looonnnnngggg time. For example, it might be taking minutes to initialize a network routine or load fonts or .... if there are one or more items taking a long time, that can point you towards fixing the cause.
  • by R6000CH,

    R6000CH R6000CH Mar 20, 2011 11:26 AM in response to BGreg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 20, 2011 11:26 AM in response to BGreg
    Hmmm, it's not getting past the grey apple screen now. Have resorted to the iPhone to update this post. Tried restarting with visible text on startup (black screen). It stopped at power parent?
  • by BGreg,

    BGreg BGreg Mar 20, 2011 1:38 PM in response to R6000CH
    Level 6 (17,522 points)
    Mar 20, 2011 1:38 PM in response to R6000CH
    Did you do a normal restart (click apple on menu bar and restart)?
  • by R6000CH,

    R6000CH R6000CH Mar 20, 2011 2:54 PM in response to BGreg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 20, 2011 2:54 PM in response to BGreg
    I did in that instance, but had to resort to force power off after. Went into fsck mode and it attempted to repair the HD but stated failure. Not sure how to deal with this without the DVD drive working?!
  • by BGreg,

    BGreg BGreg Mar 20, 2011 3:07 PM in response to R6000CH
    Level 6 (17,522 points)
    Mar 20, 2011 3:07 PM in response to R6000CH
    It would be really nice to have a firewire/bootable backup. That's one reason I don't recommend USB-only external hard drives, because they can't boot up a G4 system. Do you know anyone who might have an external DVD drive that you could borrow? Preferably with a firewire connection?

    Have you tried a safe boot? Booting and holding the shift key down. That does some background disk maintenance and sometimes can bring a system up. If that works, try a normal reboot after that.

    It's sounding like your internal hard drive may be giving up the ghost, but it would be nice to confirm that. If you have an external DVD drive available, with a firewire connection, you could boot from your Leopard disk and run a disk repair. If you have the original OS X disks that came with the system, you could run the Apple hardware test too.
  • by R6000CH,

    R6000CH R6000CH Mar 20, 2011 4:29 PM in response to BGreg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 20, 2011 4:29 PM in response to BGreg
    Ok great, thanks for the tips... Will ask at work for the external firewire DVD drive!