Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

adamtki · Jul 14, 2003, 04:44 PM

Hi,

This is my brother-in-law's ibook.

He's got an iBook 600mhz with the 30GIG HD. It was running fine for a couple of years... until I upgraded him from 10.2.3 to 10.2.6. I went fine for a few days until one day, he connected his USB printer to the machine. This worked fine before, but this time, the screen went blank and he had to reboot.

Ever since, he can't reboot. He's stuck at the gray Apple logo screen. The HD makes a repetitive pattern and after a few minutes it stops making any noise.

I was able to mount it as an external FW drive. I copied his data to my computer and ran Disk Utility. Disk Utility found some node problems but just hung there when it was trying to repair it. After 15 minutes of no progress or no activity from Disk Utility, killed it and unmounted the drives. Now, I can't even mount the drives anymore.

I then tried to boot off the CD (which didn't work earlier) and this time it worked cause I waited long enough (5 minutes). I ran Disk utility, repartition, zeroed out all data, and still I can't mount it as a firewire drive in target disk mode.

Any ideas? Is the drive damaged or are some of the sectors corrupted that even disk utility and repartitioning can't fix. Thanks.

pat++ · 02:40 AM

I would run the Hardware Test CD and see what it says... I would try to reset the PRAM too... (hold cmd-option-P-R during startup)

dannyillusion · Aug 5, 2003, 04:06 AM

The exact same thing has happened to my Ibook 800 Combo...
I was playing Ghost Recon and suddenly everything went really slow, computer was getting really hot, so I quit the game as I thought that was the problem.
Fired up Safari to do some surfing but everything was really really slow there as well. Decided to open the terminal and run top. I don't have the terminal in the dock so I tried to get it in the application folder... just loading the content of the application folder took five minutes.
At this point I restarted the computer and voil�!!! The stupid thing won't even boot!!!! It gets stuck on the grey screen with apple logo, makes some harddisk noice and then goes silent.
I haven't tried starting from CD yet as I can't find them.

Yesterday I found another thread dealing wityh this problem (can't find it again). I think that guy was also running 10.2.6...
Could this be a software problem or might it be hardware?
So far I haven't found any solutions to the problem on the forums...

/Getting worried

El Mago · Aug 5, 2003, 02:08 PM

This happened to me. I don't think I tried running disk utility or starting up from the disks. Although, now that I think about it, I should have. But neither here nor there, I called apple, and we went through all their diagnostic tests and zapping the rams. Also tried rebooting in openfirmware. None of this worked. I would get an occasional gray screen, but it would quickly disappear to black. I had to send mine back to apple and get them to take care of it. They said it was the logic board and it had to be replaced. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

adamtki · Aug 5, 2003, 10:40 PM

I thought I should drop in with the outcome. After having problems repartitioning the hard drive, I decided that something was wrong with it. So I ordered a new 40 GB drive and went through the long process of replacing it myself. It was a fun experience and everything is working fine now, although I wouldn't want to go through it again. Luckily, I managed to copy all his files in FW mode before the drive was unreadable.

I don't know how the drive died. My only theory is that perhaps it's due to the heat. It is quite hot where the hard drive sits.

dannyillusion · Aug 6, 2003, 05:30 AM

That's interesting...
This happened to me on a very hot day while playing Ghost recon. The fan was running constantly which it usually doesn't and the palmrest was a lot hotter than usual. Of course this could just be coincident...
I can start the computer from CD but when I run the Disc Utility it doesn't get very far. It only announces that the test could not be performed because of an error. :=
As soon as I involve the hd everything goes to hell...

I'm gonna try the FW mode next and try to save my files...

Thanks for the help.

/D

stew · Aug 6, 2003, 06:50 AM

Just wondering - what temperatures do you have in your place these days? It's awfully hot here in Germany for several days now, and my friend's 500MHz iBook shows about the same behavior as yours. Do you know who made your hard drive (IBM, Toshiba, ...)? Could be that the drive can't stand the current heat.

I am running my 800MHz iBook at reduced speed already, sitting on a bunch of matchboxes for air flow unterneath it, and still the fan spins constantly. Not good.

adamtki · Aug 6, 2003, 10:57 AM

I don't remember the maker of the hard drive. I think it was Toshiba, but not sure.

The home where the computer was wasn't particularly hot. I think it might've been because he played a lot of games on it. I think if you keep a coolpad (or anything to elevate the computer) to ventilate the bottom, then it should be fine for most purposes. If you're gonna play a lot of games, you can do what I do with my powerbook (mainly because the fan sound is annoying when playing games) - use an artificial cold pack.

El Mago · Aug 6, 2003, 01:04 PM

I use mine at work where it is cool and low humidity. I just came into work and tried to awake it from sleep and it just stayed blank. No excess heat in my case, although a slight drop from 2 feet to a hardwood floor probably didn't help the week before?!

adamtki · Aug 6, 2003, 01:34 PM

A drop like that would certainly not be good for it.

ChadC · Aug 6, 2003, 09:32 PM

Hey, I am running into some problems with my 500mhz iBook and I noticed that Adam said he was able to mount it as an external FW drive? How is this done? I'd like to do it to try and run Disk Utlity, etc.

Thanx,
Chad

El Mago · Aug 6, 2003, 11:05 PM

Machelp:
Shut down your computer and leave the other computer on. Connect the two computers using a FireWire cable with a standard 6-pin connector on each end. Start up your computer while holding down the T key.

Hope this helps!

As for the fall...quite possibly....

ChadC · Aug 7, 2003, 11:45 AM

Shutdown iBook -> connect to G4 -> Restart iBook holding down 'T' key. Will try when I get home!

Thanx
Chad

cc_foo · Aug 8, 2003, 02:56 AM

This happened to my iBook 800. On a winters day. The initial symptoms were the mouse moving really jerkily. Unable to restart. So I held down the power key, and switched the machine off.

The machine would restart to the desktop, then kernel panic straight away. I backed up via Firewire mode, but didn't use Disk Utility (this is cos I connected the iBook to my PC via FW. The PC had MacDrive installed, and was my only other machine available).

I could boot to the Hardware Diagnostic CD, which said the memory card soldered on the logic board was damaged (I think this was slot #1). So off to Apple it went. Back now. Works well.

Seems like a common problem.