I have a PB G4 that won't start. It shows the gray apple screen, shows the blue screen, and then the screen goes black, and "sleep" light pulses.

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Level 1

4 points

I have a PB G4 that won't start. It shows the gray apple screen, shows the blue screen, and then the screen goes black, and "sleep" light pulses.

I have a PB G4 that won't start. It shows the gray apple screen, shows the blue screen, and then goes black. The sleep light pulses. From there, I can't turn it off normally. I have tried restarting the PMU. And I have tried unplugging the ac adaptor and removing the battery. From there I have plugged only the ac adaptor in, and it will begin to start but do the same thing once it shows the blue screen.

I tried only using the battery (without plugging in the ac adaptor) and the same thing happens. I tried starting the computer while holding down CTRL, Option, P, and R, waiting to hear the start up chimes 3 times, and then holding Shift as it starts up. But I still get the black screen once I see the blue one, and the computer's sleep light pulses.

I need something very important from this computer. And was able to start it last night. I did not shut down the computer, and was going to take it to a friends to use his printer today. The computer was in sleep mode in the morning.

Thanks for any help!

Gina

PowerBook

Posted on Jan 11, 2012 12:10 PM

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Answer 1

BGreg

Level 6

17,558 points

Jan 11, 2012 7:17 PM in response to GinaCofSmith

What your describing could be a logic board or memory issue.

You did or did not hear 3 startup chimes? If you hear 3 chimes when you start it, that would indicate a memory problem. Try reseating the memory to see if that makes a difference. If you have 2 RAM cards, try one then the other in each slot. If you have 1 RAM card, move it to the other slot. Powerbooks can develop one bad slot.

You may need to pull the hard drive out of the Powerbook, put it into an external case, then read it from another mac.

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Answer 2

Jan 12, 2012 12:12 AM in response to BGreg

Do you think starting the PB up in FireWire Target disk mode would be a good test to see if there's a disk or logic board issue ?

At least if it works the data could be pulled using another Mac / PC connected by FireWire.

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Answer 3

BGreg

Level 6

17,558 points

Jan 12, 2012 4:04 AM in response to Simon Teale

Certainly, if you can start it in target disk mode and hook it up via firewire, that's an option. From what you've described and the alternatives you tried, it doesn't sound likely the system would start up that way. Boot it holding the t key down to see if that would work.

You could also try starting holding the alt/option key down as you boot, as that would allow you to boot from an alternate volume, if you have a bootable backup or an OS X DVD.

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