PowerBook G4 will NOT boot up. :-(

[norrina]

I have a PowerBook G4 purchased directly from apple as a refurb in January of '06, so still within the 1 year warrantly, but the last time I called under warranty they wanted to troubleshoot for software problems before they'd accept it back. So I thought I might ask for input before I called this time.

The situation is that I was using the laptop yesterday afternoon, all hunky dory, no problems whatsoever, and then closed it and set it aside while I did something else. When I came back and opened it later, nothing happened. So I scrolled the track pad, which didn't work, and tapped the power button, which created the start up sounds. I thought that a bit odd, as I hadn't powered the machine off, but oh well. The start up seemed to progress normally, but then stayed at the apple symbol an inordinately long time, and after about 2 minutes, I got a circle with a slash through it.

I rebooted a couple more times with the same results. So I dug out my OS disk, and tried to boot from it, holding the C key while booting. This seemed to be doing the trick, until I had to chose my destination drive, at which point, there were no drives to choose from, including the hard drive.

So, now I am just at my wits end. Any ideas?

[norrina]

Oh, nevermind. I removed the battery to find the serial number, and now it works again...