I reasently went to play with my ibook, just opening it from stand by mode and it popped on but everything was frozen for some reason. So i ended up forcing it off and rebooting it only to find that it only wants to boot open firmware. I tried reseting the nvram but that didn't do anything either. What should I do?
iBook, Mac OS X (10.4.11), G4, 1.2 GHZ
You could see if it will boot into Safe Mode. This will take quite awhile longer than a normal startup because it does a file check and repair of the hard disk.
If this works you will see your normal desktop. Once completely started up in Safe Mode, try to restart normally, and go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Click on the top hard drive icon in the left sidebar and note the S.M.A.R.T. status at the bottom right of the pane. What does it say?
Select the named boot volume in the left sidebar, ("Macintosh HD" unless you've renamed it). What is the hard drive capacity and how much space remains available on it? Repair permissions on it.
See if you are able to do a little hard drive maintenance to help things out.
It won't let me open in safe mode. It either just goes back to open firmware or the screen stays black. I can't even open it in single-user mode
Can you boot off your Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger DVD) by holding down the c key as the startup chime is ending?
If you can do this, then
Select language.
• Go to the Utilities menu and launch Disk Utility.
• Select the hard drive (the manufacturer ID) in left side bar.
• Repair the hard disk.
If the hard drive does not appear as available for repair or Disk Utility reports that it cannot be repaired, then you're probably going to have to replace the hard drive.
In some cases, a third party repair utility can repair errors which Apple's own Disk Utility cannot.
I can't even start it from the dvd, it just gives me a black screen when I try.
With the DVD in, try using Startup Manager and see if it gives you any startup options.
Ended up that none of the suggestions worked and I hated that they didn't. Stupidly, i Found out that i just had a bad RAM modual and just took it out. It works fine with it's built-in RAM.
If you are the one who bought the extra RAM, most vendors have a lifetime warranty on it.
Thanks for posting back and letting us know what the problem was.
The mac was given to me from one of my Dad's friends for my birthday one year, so I sad to say I didn't by the RAM.
You're welcome for the reply.
What's funny is the friend is the one who suggested pulling out the RAM after all this time. Funny how that worked out
Well, if you'd been having kernel panics, that would have been the first thing that would have come to mind.
That is the more usual result when RAM fails.
Ended up being a bad extended RAM Modual, must have gotten zapped when I took it apart last. Works fine without it.
Problem free ibook now can only boot 'open firmware,' help please!
