Need help with i book

spiky001

Registered
Hi 1st post here hope it,s in the correct place, I,m looking for help with a dead Ibook, It wont boot past kernel I do not have a cd for it either I have been given this to fix IF possible.
A little of my back ground, Used windows till upto about year and a half then switched to Ubuntu, Never used a Mac so this is all going to be new.
Hope you can help with I book thks in advance to all that help
 
I can say with some certainty that you're probably not going to get too far without some kind of OS X Install/Restore CD/DVD, much like you won't get very far with a car and no keys.

What, exactly, do you mean by "it won't boot past kernel" -- can you provide a screenshot?
 
Ok I have been googleing for I dont know how long, If I press the Option key at boot, I get 3 icons left 1 is a Ubend arrow, middle 1 is a icon of a hard drive with a BLUE CROSS (is this significante) the right icon is an arrow. I cant move around the icons either, My thoughts are hdd failure
 
That screen is the Mac's boot manager screen.
If you have no hard drive, then you would get just two icons - the curly arrow, and the right-facing arrow. The curly one would retry looking for a boot device. That might take several minutes before it stops (the spinning cursor will change back to a normal arrow.) The right-facing arrow, when clicked, will tell the Mac to try to boot to the selected device. Any other icons will be devices with a partition that manager thinks is bootable.
Get to that screen, then wait for the cursor to change to a normal arrow, and click the hard drive icon, and finally, click the right-facing arrow.
In a working system, you should then boot to that hard drive - That is, you will see a light grey screen with the dark grey apple, followed by the spinning gear under the Apple. The screen should eventually change to blue, then a progress bar in a window. That will disappear, and the system will continue to load the desktop icons and menubar, etc.
What happens then on your iBook?
If it seems to stop at some point, give it some time, up to 20 minutes or so - before you might say the system has stalled.
 
Thanks for reply Deltamac I have attached 2 screenshots, When I get to the start manager I cant move the mouse at all, the boot pic shows what is on screen, cant do anything there either curser not blinking,
 

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The second screen shot is certainly the boot manager screen. If you don't see a cursor (it doesn't appear in that screen shot), then you have something seriously wrong. Try a USB mouse to see if you get a cursor when that's plugged in. Any USB mouse should work for that.
Your first screen shot is a typical kernel panic. That's often hardware related. I would try reseating the RAM memory chip. If you lift up the keyboard on the iBook (there's latches at each end of the fKey row), you will see a graphic showing how to get at the memory slot. There's only one slot.
If you don't get a cursor with an external mouse, then you may have other hardware problems that will not be worth fixing.
Try a couple of resets
Hold the power button until the iBook shuts off, or disconnect power, and remove the battery, to make sure you're completely off. Battery back in, and plug in the power adapter. Wait for about 10 seconds, then press and release the power button. immediately hold Option-command(Apple)-P and R. You'll hear the boot chime. Keep holding those same 4 keys until you hear the boot chime 2 more times, then release the P and R, and move to O and F (that's the letter o, not zero). If you hold those Option-Apple-o and f, you should then get the Open Firmware screen.
At the prompt, type reset-nvram, and press enter (don't forget the - between the words, no spaces)
The response should be OK.
Then type reset-all and press enter
Your iBook should restart.
Hold Apple-S while the screen is still dark.
Shortly after the Apple appears, you should see some text scrolling down. Release the keys.
At the prompt, type /sbin/fsck -fy
and press return. You should see that the hard drive is being tested with various tests.
If that completes with no problems found (does it?), then type /sbin/mount -uw /
and then press return.
When you get the prompt back, type reboot, and press return again. and - Should reboot then.
If you get the same kernel panic - you'll need OS X reinstall CDs to fix.
 
Thks, there is a cusor top left also before the arrow you get the timer spinning also top left,I will try the other suggestions and get back with results
 
ok got as far as reset-all then ended up with apple logo then kernel panic, so now we need an OS to rebuild system, I read that there are different types??? where do i start which 1 do I need???, there is another option install linux, I would prefer mac to learn, how can I tell if it has a cd rom or dvd rom???
 
well i think normally if you stick a dvd in a cd rom only machine it spits it out. Your gonna only be able to install panther or lower on it if it's cd if you want something better like tiger or leopard you going to need to do that firewire from a external hard drive or another mac but kernal panics everytime you boot is kinda scary.
 
ok thks, yes I tried a linux dvd spat it out, the cd stayed in but went no further so I take it it,s a cd drive. So can I get panther or do I have to buy it???
 
ok thks, yes I tried a linux dvd spat it out, the cd stayed in but went no further so I take it it,s a cd drive. So can I get panther or do I have to buy it??? are there any differences in versions or any version will work, I see things mentioned about intel etc
 
well i forgot to mention you may have the specs under the keyboard at the top on a sticker if not the model number is on the bottom of the case at the top www.everymac.com will give you the specs of the machine. panther requires i think only 128mg of memory while tiger takes 256 and not shure about leopard , both tiger and leopard are only on dvd so you would have to install by firewire from an ipod, google has info on it or from another machine. Yes you will have to buy it or have it given to you.
 
Ok looked under keyboard it lists 128mb ram (ram modual sayes it,s 512) 800mhz 30 gig drive cd, So takein that onboard I cant use dvd, Is it possible to boot from usb??? I would really like to keep a mac os, but I can install ubuntu
 
ibooks don't boot off usb. You have plenty of ram for tiger. I would get a copy of panther somehow and drop that sucker in and hold the c key but kernal panics i've been told are hardware issues. I have the same ibook and few others and when the hard drive went out I could still boot from system disk. did you try taking out the extra ram and battery and a pram reset? try booting in safe mode with the ram out and the airport card if you have one be careful taking that stuff out though. safe mode is the shifty key before it starts up
 
ok I have removed ram and airport card held option+command+p+r still end up with kernel panic, held shift key then booted no noted change ends up at kernel panic, So if I had a cd disc it should boot of that without hdd, Also will it boot from a usb dvd drive???
 
well really i'm not shure if it will boot cause your having a kernal panic but mine did with the panther cd it just would'nt locate the hard drive . No ibook will ever boot off usb I wish it did. the best bet is to start with the install cd of panther and see what happens .
 
I hope it works kernal panic is a hardware issue and could mean the hardware that's bad is the motherboard. I'm not shure if diskwarrior 4 would work in that condition but it's used to check stuff like that good luck again.
 
Ok my mission today is remove the hard drive fit it in a external caddy see if I can rescue anything off it, then replace hard drive! before I fit new drive I want to format it, What should I format it to is it HFS? I will try to format from a linux machine. I would just like to add the surpport I have had has been great thks guys
 
Ok my mission today is remove the hard drive fit it in a external caddy see if I can rescue anything off it, then replace hard drive! before I fit new drive I want to format it, What should I format it to is it HFS? I will try to format from a linux machine. Can I fit the usb caddy to another mac laptop and format it that way? I would just like to add the support I have had has been great thks guys
 
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