Newbie w/ prob! won't boot anymore!

[azneinstein]

Hi guys, and thanks for reading this, hopefully you guys will have a solution.

I got a powerbook after my brother graduated from college, I'm more of a PC user (don't gasp) and I've been using my powerbook for mainly music, movies, internet, chatting, etc, nothing hardcore. It's I believe a G4 1ghz one, not the newest but not the oldest either. Here's the problem, lately it's been giving me that "you must restart your computer" with that giant grey box on the screen. And recently, everytime I make a sudden movement with it, it gives me that screen, and right now, after I did that. It restared with a "Bootrom" screen where it allows me to either "mac-boot" to continue or "shutdown" to shutdown, sort of looks like a grey DOS screen. When I try mac-boot, it goes into this icon with a folder, that blinks a question mark and two faces. That's it.

Am I screwed? And yes, it's sort of making a clicking noise which I suspect is a harddrive that's taken one too many bumps.

I tried the holding down buttons, resettin Pram, safe mode, all that already.

I never installed a tiger OS on this guy, my brother handed it to me with everything functional on it to begin with so do you guys have any idea on what to do? Thanks again-Ken

 

[Lt Major Burns]

the folder with the finder-face/question marks flashing at the start means the OS wasn't in the first place it looked/can't find any OS.

 

[Satcomer]

By your description it sounds like the hard drive may have gone. I say this because you point to the fact that you said:

Here's the problem, lately it's been giving me that "you must restart your computer" with that giant grey box on the screen. And recently, everytime I make a sudden movement with it, it gives me that screen, and right now, after I did that. It restared with a "Bootrom" screen where it allows me to either "mac-boot" to continue or "shutdown" to shutdown, sort of looks like a grey DOS screen. When I try mac-boot, it goes into this icon with a folder, that blinks a question mark and two faces. That's it.

Hopefully you have the the original install disks. Try launching that (by powering up the computer and holding down the "c" button. Oh, I almost forgot a nifty BSD trick that OS X can do. Also try following these steps given by Apple, especially this article. Pay close attention to fsck and single user mode.

As I said before, by your description, it sounds as if the hard drive is going, gone. Hopefully there some Apple Stores or Apple Specialists near you.