Can't Boot My Ibook

N

nightflyer

Registered
Hi
after some application-crashes I decided to restart my iBook G4 933MHz, 640MB RAM, OS 10.3.9. since then I can't start anymore. I took out my 512MB RAM, didn't help, ran apple's hardware test, was fine, started from the OS X CD and ran disk utility's repair. it repaired some catalogue- and b-tree-stuff, I ran i twice or three times until the volume was fine. but still when checking, it "repairs" at the end, all tough it won't find an error. I started from the norton utilities system works 3.0 cd, norton disk doctor repaired major errors in the b-tree, but I can't start.

when starting in verbose-mode, I get several "IOUSBDevice: family matching failed" messages and the system stops booting at the same place every time. the last normal line is:
Got boot device = ....
BSD root: disk03s, major 14, minor 2

I could start in target-mode, backup mostly everything and red the old system.log-files
in those files, always the line
"localhost kernel: Jettisoning kernel linker." followed this "BSD root-line", so it seems the system hangs up there. does anyone know, what happens or what happened? my next step would be an archive installation of mac os, but if there is an other solution, please let me know! starting in safe-mode doesn't work, resetting the PRAM and power settings doesn't help either.

thank you very much and kind regards from switzerland
dani

 
Your biggest mistake was using Norton Utilities on Mac OS X. They aren't supporting Mac OS X anymore, and teh version they have out now is very old and not for use on newer versions of OS X. This has been covered extensively in the forums as you'll note by doing a search for Norton Utils.

I guess you could try and start in Single User Mode, if you even get that far. Hold down Apple-S right after the boot chime and follow the directions given. HOpefully once it repairs everything, you should be able to boot into the Finder. Once in the Finder (if you're this lucky), repair permissions. Beyond that, I think you would have to reinstall your OS unless someone else has a better idea.
 
Also, you might want to try starting in "Safe Boot" by holding down the SHIFT key. If you get to the desktop this way, try and run disk utility to repair permissions.
 
Getting catalogue- and b-tree-stuff errors, you should use DiskWarrior on the drive, or reformat it.
 
You can start up in Single User Mode by holding down the cmd-s keys at start up and hopefully you'll get a "root#" prompt. Then type "fsck -f" (no quotes). This does the same thing as Repair Disk in the Disk Utility app (except you can't do it in Disk Utility because it's the start up disk). Hopefully, it'll find and fix some problems. Then type "mount -uw /" (note the spaces always!), this will mount the start up disk. Then type "reboot", "logout", or "exit", etc. Again, Hopefully you see that nice blue screen.

Tom
PowerMac 8500 w/ 800 MHz G4, 640 MB RAM, OS X 10.3.9
PowerBook 12" @ 867 MHz, 640 MB RAM, OS X 10.4.2
 
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