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macuser132 · Jul 6, 2006, 05:50 PM

Hello Everybody,

This is a great forum!

It was a couple weeks ago when my powerbook 12 867(2003) started hanging up on startup. It wasn't proceeding past the grey screen. So, I called apple care - only a few days left on apple care extended. They said its either an HD or a logic board problem. They said either I can send it to them or take it to an apple store for repair. I had dropped my powerbook a couple times before, and there is a visible dent on the left side near power-in. I figured they'd blame the HD failure on that and make me pay for the repair. So, I decided to replace the HD by my own, rather than go through the needless hassle.

I followed the famous ifixit guide and successfully replaced the original toshiba 40G with a new Hitachi 80 G (newegg). Surprisingly, I was able to do it considering the fact that I had never worked inside a computer before! It was a very difficult task.

I formatted the drive in extended format and partitioned it creating two partitions. Then I installed OS X 10.2 on one of the partitions. Then when I restarted the computer after the installation was completed, I received the "You need to restart your computer..." message. I restarted it many times, but I kept receiving the same error.

Then I erased the drive and this time I didn't partition the drive. I installed OS and restarted. This time the welcome screen appeared. So, it's working now!

This might be a stupid question, but why did I receive the panic message before? Is it because I created partitions on my drive?
This was the first time that I received that error message. Although my PB is working well now, do I need to worry?

Thanks!

Simon · Jul 7, 2006, 02:02 AM

How did you partition the HD? Did you use Apple's Disk Utilities or some other third-party tool?

macuser132 · Jul 7, 2006, 07:53 PM

Originally Posted by Simon

How did you partition the HD? Did you use Apple's Disk Utilities or some other third-party tool?

Disk Utility from the install CD.

BkueKanoodle · Jul 8, 2006, 01:04 AM

It's not unheard of to have a bad install happen. This could have caused the kernel panics, in which case reinstalling usually fix's it. It doesn't happen often, especially in the mac world, but it does happen.

macuser132 · Jul 8, 2006, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by BkueKanoodle

It's not unheard of to have a bad install happen. This could have caused the kernel panics, in which case reinstalling usually fix's it. It doesn't happen often, especially in the mac world, but it does happen.

Thanks. I was just worried that I may have some other hardware problem (non-hd). Also, the first time when I partitioned it, I forgot to customize the installation and it installed all those foreign language files and printer drivers. The second time I unchecked those before installing OS.