iBook dead at grey screen

C

Catfish Jones

Registered
I put it to sleep and tucked it safely into my laptop bag which was sitting on my chair, a couple of feet off the rugged floor. My computer bag closed, it rolled off the chair and onto the rug. I didn't think anything of it. About 20 minutes later I got to where I was headed, unpacked my laptop and woke it up. Nothing. Just a black screen.

So I held the power button for 5 seconds and booted it up again. It stopped at the grey screen (no Apple logo or progress ball). I've tried booting from my Hardware test CD and my 10.3 system disk (CD 1), it just goes to the grey screen and stays there.

I've tried booting in safe mode and in single-user mode, I've tried zapping the PRAM.

I have heard my HD crunching away for a minute before going quiet (not every time) and sometimes during the initial press of the power button, my fan comes on full speed and quickly stops again.
 
My first assumption was the drive. And i still feel thats a big, if not the biggest problem you have. If its booting to only a grey screen with no apple logo or spinning apple, the machine is not finding a system to boot from. You also mentioned hearing the drive grinding away. The only thing keeping me from saying its absolutely the harddrive is the fact that you mentioned the fan spinning up heavy. That could mean logic board. Could be the harddrive cable too.
 
Cheers, I do think it's something serious. Going to drop it off for warrenty work... though my warrenty expired about two weeks ago. :(
 
"a couple of feet off the rugged floor" - I'd say warranty doesn't cover it, whether it was in a bag or not.
 
Have you tried removing the battery.
Restarting and booting into Open Firmware?
Hold down Cmd-Opt-OF at startup,
type reset-nvram <return> reset-all <return>

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Or have you tried booting from an external drive with a system on it?
Then run DW?
 
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