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Powerbook G4 15" will not start up - makes three beeping noises, hard drive spins
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Bay Area, CA
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One day my roomate goes to boot up his PB and it makes three beeping noises and then makes some kind of other n oise, as if the harddrive is trying to start up, and then the sleep light comes on and nothing else happens. He took it to get fixed at our school's lab, the guy there took out the harddrive from the bottom and blew on it, he said it was loose too. He booted it up TWICE at the lab and it worked, but when he brought it back home the same tthing happened.
Then earlier tonight this other kid said that if you drop the PB from an inch onto a table it will fix the harddrive somehow. lol i don't know if this is true, but it didnt work for him...
Any thoughts? Anything would help at this point...
Oh, and we tried to take out the harddrive again but we couldnt figure out how...
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12" 1.5Ghz Powerbook G4 w/ SuperDrive
DELL 23" LCD Display
10 GB iPod, 3rd Gen
4 GB iPod Mini, green
Apple Bluetooth mouse
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Seattle, WA
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Three beeps means that none of the ram passed the test that the computer runs when it turns on. If you added ram lately, remove it and try it again. I'm guessing that there is third party ram in there as Apple RAM is pretty good and fails rarely. Try adding RAM that you know is good, from another powerbook for example and see if the computer boots.
If adding known-good ram doesn't fix the problem then the logic board is broken, and the computer will have to be sent to Apple for repair.
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Impulse Response
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Seattle, WA
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Impulse Response
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Sep 2003
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Originally Posted by Tom_Peters
Then earlier tonight this other kid said that if you drop the PB from an inch onto a table it will fix the harddrive somehow. lol i don't know if this is true, but it didnt work for him...
Did the kid have the munchies when he gave this advice?
Dropping a computer is pretty much never a good idea, inch or no.
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MacBook Pro - 2.0GHz Core Duo
iBook - 1.2GHz G4
PowerMac - Dual Core 2.3GHz G5
Mac mini - 1.25GHz G4
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Seattle, WA
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Originally Posted by Bryanmc
Dropping a computer is pretty much never a good idea, inch or no.
I've had some luck with this technique as an absolute last resort for failed hard drives, but I would tend to agree with your sentiment that dropping computers isn't usually a good course of action.
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Impulse Response
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: ~/
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Originally Posted by Tom_Peters
...He took it to get fixed at our school's lab, the guy there took out the harddrive from the bottom and blew on it, he said it was loose too.
 Uh, since a hard drive is a sealed, nearly sterile system, not sure exactly what blowing on a hard drive is going to do.
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Admin Emeritus  Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
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Originally Posted by Bryanmc
Did the kid have the munchies when he gave this advice?
Dropping a computer is pretty much never a good idea, inch or no.
Dropping a hard disk (NOT the whole computer!) an inch is sometimes used to resurrect a drive that has failed due to "sticktion". It's a last-resort method for a drive that can't get any worse. Another thing to try is to put the drive in the freezer (it makes parts shrink slightly, releasing stuck parts).
But this problem has nothing to do with the hard drive, so all of that is irrelevant.
tooki
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