Power Book G4 Stuck On Blue Screen

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Level 1

8 points

Power Book G4 Stuck On Blue Screen

Greetings

I discovered my PowerBook G4 stuck on a blue screen recently. I had found an old thread on this issue and attempted to repair by starting with the "command/option/P/R" keys, waiting for three "bongs", then holding the "shift" key down after the third "Bong". No success. It went from the grey Apple screen with the progress gear, to the blue screen.

I retried this operation several times, and have now noticed upon the initial start, I am hearing a 1 or 2 second beep, followed by the startup "Bong". I get the same results as mentioned above.

I have run Disk Warrior starting it with the "C" key and running through all the available repair/rebuild options. Disk Warrior reports a few repaired bugs.

Restarting normally yields the same results as above.

Is there anything else I can try here?

Thanks for your help!

Posted on May 23, 2013 5:13 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Texas Mac Man

Level 8

46,839 points

May 23, 2013 6:39 PM in response to Zizerzazz

Troubleshooting portables that won't turn on or start up

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA25686?viewlocale=en_US

Will it boot into Safe mode? Depress the Shift key at startup. May take a while to run, but usually fixes some problems.

Boot using your system disc and run Disk Utility.

 Cheers, Tom 😉

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Answer 2

Zizerzazz Author

Level 1

8 points

May 24, 2013 2:26 PM in response to Texas Mac Man

Thanks Tom. I tried the safe boot but the screen just gets hung up at the grey apple with the turning gear. My last try, I had the shift key depressed for about 3 minutes.

Problem remains

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Answer 3

May 24, 2013 3:12 PM in response to Zizerzazz

Have you reset the PMU http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1431

Have you booted using your system disc? If it won't boot, it's most likely a hardware problem.

 Cheers, Tom 😉

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Answer 4

Network 23

Level 6

12,333 points

May 25, 2013 6:55 PM in response to Zizerzazz

The other thing you can try is to hold down Command-V at startup. That will boot it into Verbose mode, so that instead of seeing gray or blue screens, you get to see the command-line text status messages for everything that is loading at startup. If if hangs, make a note of what the message is that it's stuck on. That might provide a clue.

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Answer 5

Zizerzazz Author

Level 1

8 points

May 26, 2013 5:09 AM in response to Zizerzazz

Before I read your suggestion Network 23, I wound up doing a clean install with my system disk. I first tried installing without erasing my installed sofware (I forget what that method is called) but got the same blue screen results as my original post. Luckily, I did save most of my music and important data to an external HD.

Interesting that when I then upgraded to Leopard, I had to do that installation twice before it worked. The first installation yielded a start up that stuck on the grey Apple screen. The second installation attempt was successful.

Thank you both.

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