Apple logo drops at startup and the Mac will not boot?

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Level 1

5 points

Apple logo drops at startup and the Mac will not boot?

What does it mean when the Apple logo drops at startup and the Mac will not continue booting? The boot fails really early on in the boot sequence, it won't even get as far as the single user mode of the boot sequence.

The system is on a external disk, and I seem to be having some weird system issue here, but I am not sure how to describe them, but I will try.

I should add that I have this awful feeling that I have come across this problem before, and maybe should remember, but I can't.

What would stop OS X from booting?

Some setting is wrong?

Something is missing?

Some procedure not done right?

It really should boot!

I can boot from other external disks no problems on both an iBook and Powerbook, and I have done a disk first aid on the main external disk in question, and found no problems.

I really think it is something I have done wrong, not something gone wrong with the drive.

And I know I could re-install it all again, but if I don't know what went wrong, then the problem could arise again, hence this thread.

This is what I did...

Installed 10.2 on external drive via iBook.
Installed iBook software restore.
Installed 10.3 upgrade.

All works fine on iBook. Boots okay with just this up to 10.3.0.

Does not work on Powerbook, which I expected without an update.

Upgrade to 10.3.7, still does not work on Powerbook. (Which I understood with 10.3.7 it would.)
Upgrade to 10.3.8, still does not work on Powerbook.
Upgrade to 10.3.9, still does not work on Powerbook. (Note: Other 10.3.9 systems very much like this work on Powerbook including the 10.3.9 on the iBook via Target mode.)
Now the 10.3.9 system on external drive will not boot even on the iBook.

Does this help in finding out what I did wrong?

Any clues?

TIA.

iBook/Powerbook Mac OS X (10.3)

Posted on Mar 13, 2006 3:03 PM

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Answer 1

cornelius

Level 6

17,826 points

Mar 13, 2006 5:20 PM in response to DVTK

DVTK:

I don't know what your exact problem is, but my guess is that your external was not properly formatted. However, if you are trying to boot OS X from a Firewire external drive it should not be a problem.

Here is what I suggest.
1. Use DU on the PB to completely reformat and partition the external HDD making sure the Volume Format is Mac OS Extended and Mac OS 9 drivers are installed.
2. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your PB to the external HDD. After you have installed and opened CCC go to Preferences and check the boxes for Repair Permissions, Make bootable and synchronize to target. Then select your source and target in the pulldown menus. (You can edit the list on the source by selecting the item and clicking on the delete button.

Post back with further questions or comments.

Good luck.

cornelius

PismoG4 550, 100GB 5400 Toshiba internal, 1 GB RAM; Pismo 500 OS (10.4.4) Mac OS X (10.4.5) Beige G3 OS 8.6

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Answer 2

Mar 13, 2006 8:04 PM in response to DVTK

For a mac that will not boot this is a good starting place

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106464

I am a little confused reading your post as to whether or not the powerbook is failing to boot on the internal drive, the external drive, or anything. Can it boot using an install disk? That usually rules out problems with the hardware save the hard drive which could still be bad.

If it does not boot using any disk (internal, external, cd,dvd) then it likely has a hardware issue.

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