[gray123]

Hi,

Looking for help with the following problem. Last week, I updated my Powerbook G4 to 10.4.10 and since then the system fails to boot. The failure may or may not be linked to the update, but the timing is suspicious.

When I attempt to book the system, it hangs with the spinning daisy wheel at the gray screen with the apple logo. It won't boot from the Tiger install DVD; doesn't seem to get as far as looking for the DVD.

If I boot into single user mode and run fsck -fy, the command reports a number of block count errors when checking the catalog file and then fails while a "disk0s3: I/O error. Invalid key length (4, 20821).

I don't want to lose the data in disk if at all possible and I'd like to know;
(a) can this be repaired using a more powerful disk utility such as DiskWarrior?
(b) is this worth taking to the Genuis Bar for further work?

Thanks.

[jmiddel]

First of all if the Install DVD does not boot it is possible the DW CD won't either. But if it does, go for it, it is your best chance. The G B is certainly worthwile also. But first do these two steps, restart holding down the command option P and R keys simultaneously until you here the computer restart 3 times, that is 3 chimes. If that does not work, try this: restart holding the command option O and F keys. At the prompt, enter these 3 commands:

reset-nvram <press return key>
set-defaults <press return>
reset-all <press return>
and then to exit, type bye or mac-boot

If that does work, and nobody here has better ideas, try the G B.

And BTW, please backup!? I know that $100 can be a lot, but that is all it costs to get an external Firewire BU HD. And yes, it has to be FW, our G4 PBs don't boot from USB2.

[ginoledesma]

The error message indicates that your volume has filesystem errors. Disk Utility / fsck may not be able to repair it as you indicated, but if you have DiskWarrior, that's worth a shot. Other tools for the job are DriveGenius, but I haven't used this tool much to vouch for it.

If you have another Mac handy, you could try Target Disk Mode to see if the other Mac can recover it. I'd recommend saving data what you can at this point just in case.

[chris v]

Originally Posted by gray123 

Hi,

When I attempt to book the system, it hangs with the spinning daisy wheel at the gray screen with the apple logo. It won't boot from the Tiger install DVD; doesn't seem to get as far as looking for the DVD.

Hold down the C key, to force-boot from the optical drive, or hold down the option key for a list of bootable volumes. DiskWarrior should fix that problem.