Powerbook G4 would not boot !!

[powerbook-G4]

Hi all,

Since yesterday I am not able to boot up my powerbook G4. It gets stuck on the grey screen with the spinning wheel and nothing happens after that. I have tried pretty much everything I could read from this and other forums.
I would greatly appeciate any help provided here.

Background: I just had safari running, when it suddenly crashed, followed by the blue screen (similar to the one when we relaunch the Finder) and then it just got stuck. At this point, I went for hard reboot and since then every time it just gets stuck at the grey booting screen.

Here is the description of my system
Apple 12'' PowerBook G4 (1.33 GHz)
512 MB RAM
60 GB HDD
OS: Tiger OSX 10.4 ( I don't know the exact one as I am not able to boot up)
I have never installed any extra RAM.

Here are the things I have tried so far.
1. Tried booting in Open Firmware (holding Command+Option+O+F) and the typing reset-nvram and reset-all. This reboots the machine and it still gets stuck at the same place.

2. Tried zapping the PRAM by holding down Command+Option+P+R until three chimes and then letting go. No luck.

3. I have even reset the PMU.

4. Booting in single user (Command+S) and then doing #/sbin/fsck -fy. The first time i did this - it said minor repair needed (which it did) and then it recheked the disk and finally said HD was OK. Following this i did #/sbin/mount -uw / (which just went ahead without any message) and then I continued booting up using #sh /etc/rc. The last step just stops after several error messages of the kind - Date SystemStarter[436] The following start up items failed to properly start: etc. etc.


At the moment I do not have access to my orginal CDs (that came with the system) and I would not get them for another 2 weeks. Its very important that I get my machine ASAP, and I would really appreciate any help.

Thanks.

[Satcomer]

Sounds like you disk flubbed up and it screwed up your Tiger core. Nothing sort of an Archive & Install and see if that fixes things.

Begin Rant:

Now you have learned the old computer lesson of always having a backup handy. I say this because if is not if a hard drive will fail, it is when it will fail.

End Rant.

[powerbook-G4]

Thanks for your reply. I do have all meaningful stuff pretty much backed up. What I was wondering was if there is any way to get it to work without requiring the CDs to do a reinstall for the OS (as I do not currently have access to the original CDs).

I must mention that in the single user environment, I am able to mount and browse through all the directories/files. Any other tips anyone ?

[powerbook-G4]

Can somebody please tell me if there is any way to manually access or mount an external hard drive in single user mode. I am thinking since I am able to browse through the file system, I could just mount my external hard drive and copy all files once again, before trying a reinstall ???

I know I could use a firewire cable to connect it to another mac and accolmplish the same thing, but I dont have access to another mac or a firewire cable. So if it is at all possible to manually access the external HDD, it would be great. Any ideas?