Forums | MacLife

dbilenkey · 2003-01-08 8:43 pm

My wife has an iBook. She uses it for work (freelance graphics and web stuff). She's been happily running in 9.1 since getting it last year. It came with 10.0 installed and she's decided that she's going to try to switch to 10.2. Fine.

Except for the fact that she can't get the machine to boot. I'm not totally clear on the things she has and has not done (to get it where it is now), it had been flaky and crashing or locking up all day (in 9) and she kept having to force restart and Disk First Aid kept checking the drive. Norton Disk Doctor popped up as well (she had Norton's File saving utility on I think) and it did some things as well. Eventually I think it got to the point that even DFA wouldn't deal with the drive. What I do know is she'd at least like to start in 9 and get some of her work done and grab some email, and do some backing up but at the moment even that can't happen.

On start up the machine flashes a folder icon with the system icon on it and a question mark (it can't find the system??) If there's no OS capable CD in the drive it will just sit there flashing.

If there is the original iBook sofware install CD (that has 9.1) it will flash for a moment and then boot from the CD. Great. Well not quite. It will apparently finish booting and then upon starting to mount the desktop will freeze. Just sits there.

If there's a Norton CD in the drive it will use that to boot bt it won't even get 1/3rd of the way through the boot progress bar before it freezes.

If we hold down the option key while restarting we get two buttons, a loop on the left and an arrow pointing right on the right. Clicking either of them does nothing.

So I'm baffled. If it would finish booting with the original software CD at least we could reinstall 9.1 and hopefully get the important work off, and then start from a clean disk. But we're stuck.

Any ideas greatly appreciated.

David

danielb0101 · 2003-01-08 8:47 pm

I don't know what other advice to give you right now, as others will have many more ideas....

Do you have another Firewire equipped Mac around? If so, you should try to boot your wife's iBook into Firewire Target Disk Mode by holding down the "T" key right after the chime. If you see a Firewire Logo/Icon on the screen, it is successfully in Target Disk Mode.

Next, you need to get a 6 pin to 6 pin firewire cable. Shut down her ibook, plug in the cable to both machines, and boot her iBook holding down the T again.

She hopefully will be able to see the disk, and recover files as necessary.

Give that a shot if other responses don't work.

Good Luck.

- dB

uh, Clem · 2003-01-08 9:15 pm

Do you have anything like a hardware test CD that came with your iBook?

I ran into a booting problem something like yours. I needed to boot the hardware test then run it against the hard drive.

If no such disk came with you machine you might check with Apple on-line or in the mall.

The Firewire target disk would be a good way to recover data and/or format the affected book.

If all else fails I have "might" know cool where your could get an iBook 600MHz version (wink).

dbilenkey · 2003-01-08 10:03 pm

So we tried booting with the 9.1 CD and if we held down the Shift key we could at least get it to boot and make it to the desktop. Unfortunately the system came up with "This drive cannot be read ... would you like to initialize it?" Mac OS 9.3 gigs etc, etc.

Not really an opotion at this point wiping the drive clean, not until we get the data from since the last backup off (too long don't ask).

Thanks for the suggestions, we don't have another Firewire Mac around (we have an LC 520! smile ) We'll try that at a friends in the morning.

Anyway we ran the hardware test CD and it passed the Airport, the Logic Board and the Mass storage tests but kept failing at the Memory test. First time the error was:
mem_2/4/
The second and subsequent couple of times it was:
mem_2/3/

So now what? It's got 320 megs of ram (a 64 and a 256). Is this mean there's a problem with the stick of ram? Seating?

Again, any and all help appreciated.

David

avkills · 2003-01-08 10:26 pm

Sounds like a RAM issue. I'd pull the 256 and see if it boot clean into the desktop from the OS9 CD.

Another idea is to reset the PRAM.

-mark

titok16 · 2003-01-09 12:16 am

hey man! look who has the ssolution!!! ME!!!!!GAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA
first, reset the pram...hold apple option p r on startup...let the computer chime a couple times...like 3 times evil
but, thats not where t l337ness of my help starts!!!!!gahahah
alright, heres what you do.....boot of the cd holding shift, since thats the only way it seems your comp will boot
first of all....KILL norton....deletamente...i assume you have the cd around somewhere....norton 6.0 messes your os x hard drive up pretty bad, i think...dunno....but, dont optimize or run disk doctor, if you can help it...
ok, done? norton all gone? yay!
and then, run disk first aid. i know, disk first aid?????? you must be mad! it cant to ANYTHING!!!
well, it can. in this case. for some wiiiiiierd reason, it will be able to see your drive that "needs to be initialized" and all you gotta do is click on repair...
dont do anything else....
the exact same thing happened to me when i booted into os 9 for the first time after installing Jaguar...w00t
hope that helps man...otherwise...

dbilenkey · 2003-01-09 7:12 am

OK, well the PRAM was reset a while ago. and that didn't help.

I'll try rebooting with the OS9 CD and using DFA from the CD. I really don't want to have to wipe this thing....

We'll pull the 256 stick as well and see what happens. I cannot believe how much trouble this has become.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll let let know how it turns out later.

David

dbilenkey · 2003-01-09 7:46 am

Well, first news:

We booted from the CD, ran DFA, it found some errors, most noticeably: "MountCheck has found serious errors" and then ended with "Cannot continue.An internal error has occurred." "The volume "Macintosh HD could not be mounted"

This while we still had the 256 stick in. I'm trying it again to see if we get the same error(s) and results, and then I'll shut it down and pull the stick and try again.

confused sad

David

ShnickyShnack · 2003-01-09 8:15 am

Is your hard drive partitioned? Is OS9 on the same disk as OSX? If so, I've heard that might cause problems.

But it definitely does sound like a RAM problem. Did you buy the RAM through Apple, or through a third party? Maybe you could send it back, if it's not too late.

dbilenkey · 2003-01-09 8:24 am

The machine came with 9.1 and 10.0 on the same partition from Apple.

The RAM has been in the machine from day 1 (over a year now) and was installed by the dealer.

David

dbilenkey · 2003-01-09 9:25 am

sad

So after removing the 256 stick the machine passed all of the hardware tests. Great.

So I thought we'd try the DFA off the CD solution again. Again the same problems were found:

MountCheck found serious errors

Overlapped extent allocation, 4, 110

Overlapped extent allocation, 4, 7053

It them made it to:

Repairing the disk
Cannot continue. An internal error has occurred
The volume "Macintosh HD" could not be mounted.

So I'm getting the impression we are seriously screwed here. eek

Please tell me there's another way.

I just noticed that there's a line at the bottom of DFA that says something about if there are serious errors the drive may need to be repaired withsome other program. What other programs are there?

David

skymt0 · 2003-01-09 9:40 am

Sorry, but you are seriously screwed. I'd get thee to a data-recovery service pronto if it's worth that much to you. I've heard Drivesavers is good. sad

dbilenkey · 2003-01-09 9:59 am

Interestingly I decided to try DFA from the OSX CD that came with the iBook. It fixed a thing or two (different things than DFA OS 9.1 saw, although a couple of overlapping allocation extents kept coming up so it seems to have been unable to fix those) such that at least the OSX installer saw the HD and will install to it without requiring it to be reformatted.

So we're trying to reinstall OSX (even though we'd had it updated a bit) and hopefully we'll be able to see the old files and get them the heck off. Either onto a remote firewire drive or something else.

What a pain.

David

Forums | MacLife

#1 2003-01-08 8:43 pm

Completely stumped!! Help please!

#2 2003-01-08 8:47 pm

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#3 2003-01-08 9:15 pm

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#4 2003-01-08 10:03 pm

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#5 2003-01-08 10:26 pm

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#6 2003-01-09 12:16 am

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#7 2003-01-09 7:12 am

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#8 2003-01-09 7:46 am

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#9 2003-01-09 8:15 am

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#10 2003-01-09 8:24 am

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#11 2003-01-09 9:25 am

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#12 2003-01-09 9:40 am

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

#13 2003-01-09 9:59 am

Re: Completely stumped!! Help please!

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