iBook boots to blue screen

F

facewax7

Registered
Hi - hope someone can shed some light on this problem. I have a 700Mhz 12" iBook which had 2 replacement logic boards under Apple's replacement program. It had a new hard drive fitted a couple of months ago as the original died, and worked fine for a while (I run an eMac as my main machine with the iBook as a backup) but now won't boot up, except in safe mode.
It boots to the grey screen with the rotating "clockface", then abruptly switches to blue screen with nothing happening. It'll boot into safe mode OK, but I can't figure out what the problem is - I've run Disk Utility on it and verified and repaired permissions, booted from DiskWarrior and run that on it, but it still won't boot properly.
I've tried booting into Single User Mode and doing all the mount -uw stuff, that doesn't seem to make any difference. I've looked for third party items in the startup items folders in /Library and /System/Library and so on.
Any ideas, anyone?
 
Hmmmm weird this :confused:

The fact that you've done all the thing you have would suggest that you might have to reinstall your OS.
If you can take off all the data you need for a backup and reinstall OSX that would be your best bet.
Sometimes it's just better to bite the bullet and do a reinstall because by the time you search for a possible solution you could of reinstalled and configured your machine and be up and running in the same time that it would take to get it back as it stands. And would you trust the machine to last in the meantime?
I know I wouldn't.

Cheers,

Rich
 
You said you ran the mount command in Single User Mode. Have you tried doing a disk repair from there? Just type "/sbin/fsck -yf" and hit return. If it says anything about "FILE SYSTEM MODIFIED," run it again until it says that the Macintosh hard drive is OK. Reboot and post back with results.
 
rebooted and tried your suggestion (I think I tried this 2 days ago but don't recall the result). It did the Checking thing and then came up with The volume iBook appears to be OK and then went back to the root prompt.
 
no. Typed reboot and it started up, grey screen, rotating dial, then went to a different kind of blue screen - hundreds of horizontal blue & white or grey & white lines (can't tell exactly, I'm colour blind) then went black.
 
No worries.

Sorry I couldn't help more.
Good luck with the reinstall though that will cure it :D

Cheers,

Rich
 
Have you tried zapping the PRAM? Hold down Command-Option-P-R after the Mac Startup chime and let it ring for about 3 or four chimes before letting go. See if this does anything.
 
Oh yeah forgot that one :rolleyes:

I would of thought though by doing all he has already would of got it to boot up to the OS :confused:
The fact that it opens a console window would be a worry.

But it could be worth a shot. Nothing to loose.

Cheers,

Rich
 
Sounds like a hardware problem. You may even have one of the iBooks that Apple recalled to replace the logic board. If you're serial number is in the range of UV117XXXXXX to UV342XXXXXX then your iBook likely needs a new logic board. However you may have missed your opportunity to get it done for free by Apple. If that's the case, and you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself, contact me and I'll be glad to provide you with an estimate on repairing it for you.
 
macworks said:
Sounds like a hardware problem. You may even have one of the iBooks that Apple recalled to replace the logic board. If you're serial number is in the range of UV117XXXXXX to UV342XXXXXX then your iBook likely needs a new logic board. However you may have missed your opportunity to get it done for free by Apple. If that's the case, and you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself, contact me and I'll be glad to provide you with an estimate on repairing it for you.
Click to expand...

*cough*


facewax7 said:
Hi - hope someone can shed some light on this problem. I have a 700Mhz 12" iBook which had 2 replacement logic boards under Apple's replacement program.
Click to expand...
 
I'm sorry I don't understand the cough. The systems are a classic indication of a failed logic board. I've seen a number of these. If you feel my post is not helpful, feel free to take me on but you better have something of value to add to the discussion -- 'coughing' adds no value.
 
Hi all - thanks for your input, didn't check this thread over the weekend so didn't realise people were still posting. I have re-installed the original system that came with the iBook, and it will still only boot into safe mode, or what used to be extensions off (Startup + Shift key). I've now got it with OS10.2.4 installed, but it still won't boot up properly. Sadly the iBook is way past the stage when I could get Apple to replace the logic board for free, but it's already had two of these (both done under the Apple replacement scheme - which is what the *cough* referred to above, incidentally, my original post mentioned this).
I've tried zapping the PRAM too, also without noticeable effect. I've booted it into safe mode and run fsck -y etc once more this evening, but it still stops halfway through the startup (rotating dial section) and eventually boots to blue screen with arrow in top left hand corner, but nothing else happens. If the logic board is faulty, why would it boot into safe mode OK?
 
You're additional information is very helpful. Have you tried removing any memory that's been installed? It's quite possible you have a bad RAM chip. You might also have a flakey hard drive. I would bet it's a Toshiba or Fujitsu which both have high failure rates. Is the hard drive making any unusual noise?
 
I'd noticed posts referring to bad RAM and wondered about this. Before I had the new hard drive put in I'd been running on 640Mb RAM, 512Mb of which was added some time ago, been working fine. The chip itself cam from Crucial - I've put RAM from Crucial in my Dell, in my eMac and into another Mac and not had any problems at all, so I'd be reluctant to go for that option. The disk doesn't make any odd noises - can't recall what make the replacement drive was - again (and my logic may be flawed here, so bear with me) if this was a disk issue, why would it boot happily into safe mode but not normally? Same argument as logicboard (above) really - if there was something seriously flaky with either of these bits of hardware, wouldn't the refusal to boot be less specific and across the board a bit more? If it's the logic board then I can't see myself doing anything about it - the cost of one outweighs the value of the iBook afterwards. Having spent £175 on a new HD, I don't see the sense in spending another (possibly) £200 odd on a new logicboard when the thing's only going to be worth about £300 anyway.
 
It's fast and simple to rule out the RAM. Lift off the keyboard, remove the airport card and tray below it then pull out the RAM chip. Then boot normally. Note that it's likely to be much slower because you've only got 128 MB built-in which is really not enough, so it will use the hard drive a lot to make up for lack of RAM. But at least you'll be able to test to see if it is RAM. It will only take you a few minutes. In-fact, you should pray that it's RAM because it's fairly cheap and easy to replace.
 
Have eliminated the RAM - I used to manage a network of Macs but bailed out of that career before OSX came along, which is why I'm fairly clued-up on some things, not so much on others - as you say, easy to remove/replace, but with its basic on-board configuration it didn't do anything any different (and my God was it slow...) So that's ruled that one out. Any other thoughts?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top