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TICKET ARCHIVE -> G$ Powerbook Flashing Question Mark

macadam - Jul 9, 2005 - 11:26 pm

My PowerBook G4 has a flashing question mark. I Shut it off last night and turned it on today and there it was. I followed all the steps on the apple web site to no avail. COuld someone please help me?

paulogdenfletcher - Jul 10, 2005 - 12:59 am

Could you send me the link of the instructions you read on the Apple website. It would help so I'm not telling you to do the same things over again.

Thanks,
Paul Fletcher

macadam - Jul 10, 2005 - 7:42 pm

Paul,
Thank you for taking interest in my problem. I spent a little bit more time searching this web page and tried a suggestion from Cheryl for fixing the kernal problem.
Command s followed by fsck -ty i think was the method uesd and it worked for me. Anyway, I'm not sure what went wrong or how i ultimately fixed it but my computer booted up and is running smoothly now. Next time I have a problem and use this site for the solution I will pay more attention to the steps I take in solving it.

Thanks again,

John

macadam - Jul 11, 2005 - 12:27 pm

Hi Paul,

I'm writing you to ask for your help again. After a day of my computer working it returned to the flashing question mark status. Here's a link to the remedies I've tried. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58042 although I also tried resetting my pram and nvram as well as my pmu. It won't allow me to start in single-user mode anymore, and on top of all this I don't have a Mac OS X disk!!

am I screwed?

paulogdenfletcher - Jul 11, 2005 - 7:41 pm

Restart your computer & as soon as you hit the power button hold down the "Option" key. It should boot to a screen where it lets you select what drive you would like to startup on. Once you see that screen, just select the drive that has OS X installed on it. Then select the arrow that points to the right & it should start up using that drive. Let me know how that goes, If it keeps forgeting what drive to startup in, we can try a few other things. But it would definitely help to have the Mac OS X Install disks.

Thanks,
Paul

macadam - Jul 11, 2005 - 7:53 pm

Alright, I tried holding the option key down and it still took me to the flashing qeustion mark. I also have to tell you that I tried fixing it using a suggestion found on this site dealing with open firmware. I tried this suggestion http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39078 and it did not work so i went to this link shown on the same posting http://www.bombich.com/mactips/openfirmware.html

I followed these steps which did not work either. I may have unintentionally changed the boot-device setting for my computer.

when i type set-default into open firmware, i get a "bad default" ok message. That can't be good.

where do you think i should go from here?

John

macadam - Jul 11, 2005 - 9:11 pm

Update,
I tried the option key again and the blue screen came up with a circular arrow on the left and a normal arrow on the right, buth there are no drives to select from.

neither arrow has any effect for me.

paulogdenfletcher - Jul 12, 2005 - 1:47 am

Wow... I've never had that happen. If no drives came up when you held down the "Option" key, its basically saying their were no drives with a bootable version of OS X installed. You could try purchasing a software program called "Disk Warrior" You can then boot to Disk Warrior & have that program fix your hard-drive. That would be the next thing I would do. Disk Warrior might be able to recover & repair your hard-drive so you can boot to it again.

Try that & let me know what happens. We can work from their.

Thanks,
Paul Fletcher

macadam - Jul 15, 2005 - 2:11 pm

Hi Paul,

All your advice was very useful. I am writing to give you a n update and to ask for further help. I'm able to boot up my computer every once in a while by booting into single user mode and using the fsck -yf command. Everything runs without a hitch until I shut it off for the night and turn it on again. Then it's back to the flashing questsion mark. I set my startup disk to Mac OSX and ran disk utility repair. The disk repair fixes a bunch of groupings but when I boot up the nixt time I get the same result. Also, the computer will not recover from sleep mode and I have to force reset. Is there anything I can do now that I have my computer up and running?

Thanks
John

paulogdenfletcher - Jul 15, 2005 - 10:59 pm

You've done what I would have done. I'm going to keep searching / reading through my tech books to see if I can figure out a way to fix this problem. Just a thought, you might think about re-installing. But use the "Archive & Re-Install" option. It will save all of your data, although it will completely rebuild the system folder. & I think thats where the problem lies. Thats what I would suggest that you do. Although you could always use software like "Backup" from Apple. You can download it from the apple website @ http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ If you backed up all of your data, you could do a "Clean Install" where you erase everything & then install. Since I have many large external HD's thats what I would do. Although if you don't feel good with that you could do an "Archive & Re-Install". If you don't like either of those ideas let me know. & Will try to come up with another solution.

Thanks,
Paul Fletcher

macadam - Jul 17, 2005 - 10:42 pm

Hi Paul,

Went away for the weekend and left the computer on and there were no problems!!! I'm afraid to shut it off now. You're most resent suggestion to back up and re-intall, can I do that just using my computer or do i have to get the software?

Thanks,

John

paulogdenfletcher - Jul 19, 2005 - 10:48 pm

Okay, you can use "Backup" from Apple to save all of your data on your computer to an external storage device. I'm assuming that your computer has 20+ Gigs, so DVDs are out. If you have an external HD, you could use that to store all of your data on. If you stored all of your data on an external HD, you could do a clean install. Tell your "Mac OS X Install Disk" to erase & install 10.3 or 10.4. If you didn't want to do that, you could still fix the problem by telling your "Mac OS X Install Disk" to "Archive & Install". This would save all of your data, you wouldn't need to backup anything, & it would completely re-install the System Folder, & that is where the problem most likely lies.

Requirements:

1) If you want to completely reinstall the system, you will need an external HD, & "backup" from Apple. Obviously you will also need the "Mac OS X Install Disks". (If you use other backup software you can use that as well)

2) If you want to "Archive & Re-Install" your system, you won't need any backup software, or external HD's. Although you will still need the "Mac OS X Install Disks."

Thanks,
Paul Fletcher