Mac OS-X Tiger asks for restart when booting

M

mac_daft

Registered
Hi all,

Would just like to say what a brilliant site this is. It's been useful so far until now- I'm stuck!

I have an Ibook G4 14" it's around 4yrs old now.

When booting/on startup the mac freezes with an error message which asks: "you need to restart your computer. Hold down the power button for several seconds or press the Restart button" I have a picture on my mobile of this but i can't bluetooth it to my laptop because it's buggered! :( Anyway...

After doing this the first few times without going into safe mode, the mac made the usual "booong" (start-up chime) and the screen stayed completely blank, the apple back-light was lit though. I found that when leaving it for a while i was able to get to the login screen but the error message re-appeared.

After a bit of research on here...I held down the Power button, started in safe mode, did the whole fsck shabang and it fixed an error on the volume header it came up with the message that all was a-ok and i typed in "reboot".

I've managed to get to the login screen and as soon as i entered by login details. The same message has come up again and I am not sure where to go from here?

The failings of this laptop after so long is a sure sign telling me that i need to upgrade to a MacBook! Now typing from a Windows XP laptop and not feeling too happy about it :(

Thanks for any help in advance.

Regards,

Brian.
 
Update: It's fixed itself now! :D

Is there anything i can do to prevent this happening in future?

Edit: Back to square one!
 
Last edited:
Its called a kernel panic and can be caused by a variety of reasons. Seeing that its failing at the point its failing at, I would start looking at RAM first by installing some known good RAM or at least removing any additional RAM and maybe just trying to boot with any onboard RAM, if any?
 
That makes a lot of sense mate, thanks :)

My hard-disk is pretty full and when starting it up today i was going to move all the files onto another hard disk. It's currently on 512mb RAM just now with the other slot free under the keyboard. Would it help trying to add to that first to see if it speeds things up a bit? Or is testing the older ram a better move as you've suggested? I'm no good at internal RAM so i'm not going to start fiddling with that myself :(

There's an "un-official" but highly trusted mac store in edinburgh - might have a chat to them tomorrow and just tell them to "do it for me" because i've lost patience with it!
 
60gb hard drive, probably about 4-6.5gb free space left. I have been down in those levels before though and all has been well.

Brian
 
Have you tried testing your hard drive? You can do that by starting up from your OS X installer DVD, and choose Disk Utility from the menus. Select your hard drive, and click the Repair Disk button (different from Repair Disk Permissions).
Come back with the results of that repair.
 
No. Will I will try that mate. Thank you :) I'm not brilliant when it comes to fixing computers for fear of breaking them even more, so thanks for the replies and your patience...If i can save £69 going to a mac specialist who might just stick a CD in the slot then i will!

Not had to attempt to fix a PC for 4yrs and NEVER had to fix a mac before. Will try this tomorrow morning. (it's 12.45am in Scotland at the moment).

Brian
 
Hi There,

Three of us here at home have Ibook G4's and this problem began for us in December '09. Did you find out what it was. The only thing I can think that we all have in common is a wireless hp printer. I am going to try removing the driver. SIGH!!!
 
Not fixed or even tried to run the driver software yet! hopefully it'll tell me something. I am actually typing to you from a MacBook instead because i just couldn't be bothered with it at the time. I'll fix it and sell it on hopefully is my plan :)

If i do fix it, I'll report back here as to what was going wrong. I do think it'll be a RAM issue though. If i could just get into finder for 5mins to delete some programs or something that would be ideal!

Cheers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top