Powerbook G4 (17" 1.67 gHz)

M

macincrotch

Registered
Just recently, my powerbook has been freezing after startup. After logging in, Finder is taking a very long time to launch and as soon as I try to open Finder windows or applications, it freezes up and wont allow me to force quit anything. I've attempted to run the disk utility, but it freezes as well.

There have been no recent software/hardware updates. I am running Leopard but don't have the install discs. I still have the 10.4 install discs, but would like to avoid backtracking to 10.4 since I'm running newer apps that aren't compatible with 10.4. Suggestions?
 
Boot to your installer disks and run disk utility to repair the disk. Post back with results or errors it comes up with. Also in disk utility on the bottom check the SMART status of the drive. It should say verified, if it says failed you are looking a Failing HD.
 
Thanks for the info, djackmac. I ran disk utility from the startup disc last night and it didn't recognize my hd, so I couldn't repair it. Sounds like the hd took a crap on me. If this is most likely the case, would you recommend buying a new hd and swapping it in? Any work around I can use to recover data from the damaged hd?
 
sounds like there is not much hope of getting the data unfortunately. We do light recovery at the shop, but every instance is different. But from what you are describing it doesn't sound promising. The best thing to do at this point is to get the drive out of the machine and go from there, but if you don't have other equipment to work with, this won't do much good.
 
Thanks again. I'm buying a replacement drive online and found a nice tutorial for installing it on ifixit. I've had the thing for over 5 years now and it was bound to happen sooner or later. Until I can afford a new mac, I'm milking this whore for all it's worth.
 
So I just bouhgt a new hard drive, installed it and ran the osx installer disc and it can't find a location to install osx. I checked in disk utility, and its showing that there is a hard drive mounted with Read/Write status. Am I missing something here? I assumed it would recognize the disk and install, but nothing shows up when I go to select a destination. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
 
Your new hard drive is not yet prepared (formatted)
Boot to the installer again, then choose Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
Choose your hard drive from the list, then click the Erase tab. Name your partition, if you like. Make sure the format is set for MacOS Extended (journaled), and click the Erase button. When that completes, Quit Disk Utility, which will return you to the installer. Select the hard drive then, and continue with the install.
 
I've reformatted the hd, installed 10.3 and I'm back up and running. I need to reinstall Adobe CS3, but need at least 10.4 to run it. Before my hd crashed I was running 10.5 and moving along decently. My question: Should I buy and install 10.4 or 10.5? What will give me better performance based on my older G4 trying to run this software? Also, any recommendations on where I can find the older discs without costing too much?
 
10.4 or 10.5 - both should be fine, but for 10.5 I would maximize the RAM for your Mac first.
Amazon, Ebay etc should have those discs cheaper. If going with Ebay, make sure it is the retail disc set (those are always color black - never gray) and don't have a word 'upgrade' in them.
10.5 is probably a bit better - as in thinking ahead for a few years. (Including the possibility that you'll get a new Mac... you'll get a better price in that case for your current Mac with 10.5)
 
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