ibook G4 1.42 hanging boot

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ibook G4 1.42 hanging boot

I have a ibook G4 that was running perfectly. Then Safari said it needed to run an update. I ran the update and then rebooted. The G4 will now no longer boot. It hangs up during the "Starting Mac OS X" display with the blue progress bar. When the progress gets to the end of the bar the system just hangs at that point no matter how long I let it set. The system never completes booting.

I do not have the original install CD of Tiger 10.4

What can I do to fix this ridiculous problem which never should have occured with a Safari update process.

Thanks

ibook G4-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.4)

Posted on Sep 3, 2013 8:44 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

238,997 points

Sep 4, 2013 12:26 AM in response to 1com

Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.

(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)

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Answer 2

1com Author

Level 1

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Sep 4, 2013 10:20 AM in response to BDAqua

If I hold down the shift key just after the chime sound it will go to the gray screen with apple. Then the small rotating gear appears under the apple logo. Then the machine shuts off.

So, there seems to be no way to enter "safe boot". Ideas? 😟

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

238,997 points

Sep 4, 2013 11:40 AM in response to 1com

That is generally a sign of a dying or severely corrupted Hard Drive. 😟

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Answer 4

1com Author

Level 1

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Sep 4, 2013 1:47 PM in response to 1com

I don't know how that can be when the system has not had any glitches and has been running perfectly. I repeat, this problem only began after Safari updated itself. There were no problems prior to that.

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Answer 5

rccharles

Level 6

12,957 points

Sep 4, 2013 3:53 PM in response to 1com

Harddrives can fail at any time. It appears that your harddrive's time was up. The safari update my have written to a bad portion of the drive. The changing of the application's directory may have failed creating a mess.

There are a lot of steps to replacing the hd.

http://faqintosh.com/risorse/en/guides/hw/ibook/g4hd/

Verify that this machine has a firewire port. The easiest thing would be an external firewire drive.

You need an external Firewire drive to boot a PowerPC Mac computer [ a few G5's will boot from USB ].

I recommend you do a google search on any external harddrive you are looking at.

I bought a low cost external drive enclosure. When I started having trouble with it, I did a google search and found a lot of complaints about the drive enclosure. I ended up buying a new drive enclosure. On my second go around, I decided to buy a drive enclosure with a good history of working with Macs. The chip set seems to be the key ingredient. The Oxford line of chips seems to be good. I got the Oxford 911.

I'd give OWC a call. 1-815-338-8685.

FireWire 800 + USB 3, + eSATA

&

save a little money interface:

FireWire 400 + USB 2.0

This web page lists both external harddrive types. You may need to scroll to the right to see both.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

(2) FireWire 800/400 Ports (Up to 100MB/s / 50MB/s)

(1) USB 3.0 Port (Up to 500MB/s / 60MB/s)

(1) eSATA Port (Up to 300MB/s)

Has a combo firewire 800/400 port. Not sure what this is. Looks like you will need 400 cable.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack