Sitting on the "Boot-Train" from Hell in iBook-land
I am running an iBook 500, combo drive (sort of!), 384MB RAM, 10.2.4.
Booting now seems almost impossible (although occasionally it does boot to the Finder although freezes again anywhere from immediately to about 15 minutes after boot has completed). Most often this is the scenario: I constantly get the flashing question mark or else it begins the X boot screen and freezes on the big grey apple.
An additional problem is that the combo drive (which had to be repaired under warranty 6 months ago because it stopped mounting disks) stopped working about a week or two before the boot problems began. In fact the iBook doesn't even know it has an optical drive and only lists an ATA bus in the system profiler.
So as troubleshooting goes this has been tough:
The only reason I am holding any hope out for this machine is that the problems don't seem to be consistent (ie. sometimes it boots sometimes it doesn't although it never remains booted for any length of time) and because this machine has been a rock solid machine (aside from the highly maddening combo drive problems) until recently and, finally, because the problem first appeared after trying to do something mundane: print a document in Word.
Can someone offer me any explanation or confirm whether the iBook is completely toasted or not? Any thoughts, comments, similar experiences, hypotheses, etc will be greatly appreciated.
Booting now seems almost impossible (although occasionally it does boot to the Finder although freezes again anywhere from immediately to about 15 minutes after boot has completed). Most often this is the scenario: I constantly get the flashing question mark or else it begins the X boot screen and freezes on the big grey apple.
An additional problem is that the combo drive (which had to be repaired under warranty 6 months ago because it stopped mounting disks) stopped working about a week or two before the boot problems began. In fact the iBook doesn't even know it has an optical drive and only lists an ATA bus in the system profiler.
So as troubleshooting goes this has been tough:
- I cannot boot from the optical drive because it does not work.
I cannot run the Apple Hardware CD because, again this needs the optical drive.
I removed the 256MB RAM card as a test to see if the problems disappeared but to no avail.
I have tried booting from an external firewire disk which has also produced the same problems (alternating flashing qeustion mark or partial boot to freeze).
And have even tried mounting the iBook's hard drive on another mac via Firewire Target Disk Mode.
The only reason I am holding any hope out for this machine is that the problems don't seem to be consistent (ie. sometimes it boots sometimes it doesn't although it never remains booted for any length of time) and because this machine has been a rock solid machine (aside from the highly maddening combo drive problems) until recently and, finally, because the problem first appeared after trying to do something mundane: print a document in Word.
Can someone offer me any explanation or confirm whether the iBook is completely toasted or not? Any thoughts, comments, similar experiences, hypotheses, etc will be greatly appreciated.
Comments
Possibly an extensions conflict / overload.
Try keeping the start key down while pressing Command - shift.
You should see an "extensions off " note.
Then go to the extensions manager and put an " X " into every box that isn't emmediately related to the system basics.
I personally like hauling all the software extensions related to third party software. eg photoshop etc etc
Run mac's own disk utility.
Second point might sound odd but sometimes the pram battery can either run flat. low on charge or might have a loose connection.
If you have an external keyboard try firing up from that & see what happens.
I'm not sure it can be an extensions conflict as I seem to have similar problems even when booting from a freshly installed OS X volume on an external firewire drive. But if it is an extension problem I unfortunately can't get the key combination you suggest to work as right now I am only getting a flashing question mark after the "bong".
Your suggestion relating to the pram battery sounds the most interesting to me at the moment. I didn't know the iBook had a separate battery for the PRAM? Is it easy to replace and could a flaky pram battery or pram battery connection cause these sorts of problems?
I just did some other research & stumbled across two websites that might be right up your alley.
One is more general called http://www.macfixit.com
the other is specifically an ibook user website called
http://www.ibook-user.com. This one looks really good.
Ps Someone else on these pages seems to be reporting batt problems wth their Ibook.
See " Shutdown instead of sleeping "
Cheers
No worries mate !.
Ps go down the to forum post titled
"56% battery charge dropping down to zero"
I guess there could be some other battery on the logic board? Does anyoone know much about the iBook logic board? or have any sites that give detailed info about the iBook logic board?
Originally posted by Stoo
I think that modern PowerBooks/iBooks have a small backup battery that maintains the clock, RAM contents if asleep, etc.. for the few seconds it takes to change batteries.
Do you think this battery--if it were to die--could cause problems similar to the ones I described above (boot problems, disk access problems, freezes, etc)?
Also, do you know if there are any other batteries on an iBook logic board?
Originally posted by alcimedes
are you able to boot into the command console at startup? one of the X guru's would be a better help here than i am, i'm still catching up on how it's all done, but i would recommend booting into the command prompt in X, then resetting your fimware values. not sure of the command offhand, but i'll look around.
I'm a bit of a UNIX newbie but am willing to get my hands dirty!
So if you or anyone could explain to me what needs to be done via the command console I'll give it a shot 8)
The only other thing i can think of is the possibility that you might inadvertantly created a second "system" in your hard-drive. This can happen when Norton is downloaded via dragging to hard-drive rather than installing. So there might be some confusion.
The second point seeing as your running OS-X, it might be that your prefs are corrupted.
These are found in the library.
drag them to the desktop & try rebooting.
Thats assuming you can get a restart going.
PS : Have you tried using an external key board as I suggested ?
I'm pretty sure that there isn't a second system on the machine but similar problems when booting from a firewire drive or when mounting the iBook drive via Firewire Target Disk Mode makes me think that it is unlikely that too... so... hmmmm...
I have, however, found out somehting of interest on the PRAM front. Apparently the iBook doesn't have a PRAM battery and pram settings are saved only momentarily via a capacitor on the logic board so it can't be a bad PRAM battery... howveer I suppose there could be some other small battery on the logic board that could cause problems like this? Does anyone have intimate knowledge of the construction of the iBook logic board? Do you know if there are any funky little batteries on it that might be prone to failure?
As far as I can see the Firmware idea seems most plausible so far... anyone (Alcimedes?) know how to do anything with this?
Thanks again all for your thoughts!
Originally posted by alcimedes
ok, looking for it now.
Thanks!
then type "reset-nvram" (return)
set-defaults (return)
reset-all (return)
(you can thank Brad)
Well that has helped me to at least factor out the firmware as something to be concerned about! I reset everything as you directed but unfortunately although it booted and ran for about an hour it still eventually froze and forced a restart. Again I am back with the flashing question mark at reboot
Why the iBook sometimes gives the flashing ? and sometimes boots part way and freezes, sometimes boots to the finder but crashes right away and other times allows me to work on the iBook for 15 minutes to a couple of hours I don't know
What I do know is that always the definite outcome is a freeze, sooner or later.
My guess is that there is a problem with the way the logic board communicates with the hard drive (and maybe also the combo drive). Whether the fault is with the hard disk itself or with the logic board I don't know but I am rapidly running out of ways to test the ibook.
A list of open firmware commands would be nice!
- About 6 months ago the Combo Drive stopped mounting media
- At the same time the hard drive starting becoming perceptibly louder and 'grindier'
- I sent the iBook in under warranty to Apple who replaced the Combo Drive and also replaced the Hard Disk
- 6 months later and now out of warranty the combo drive again started acting up, but this time instead of not mounting it started saying that it couldn't read the disk and offered to eject it.
- I noticed that in the System Profiler it no longer listed the combo drive as a CDRW/DVD drive but now just listed bizarrely as a CD-ROM drive.
- Shortly after this it stoped mounting all media, stopped recognising any optical drive in System Profiler and no longer ejected when I pressed the eject key on the keyboard.
- 2 weeks after this when trying to print a document in Word the iBook froze and ever since then I have been getting the freezing problems before, during, and after booting that I have discussed above.
Right now I must say I am not feeling particularly confident that this can be solved via software manipulation or via reinstalling the OS. My over-riding thoughts are that the motherboard has gone, the drive(s) perhaps have gone, or maybe the drive has become unseated or disconnected such that the connection works sometimes and other times not (arking?).Other then that I am spent!
you have your files backed up anywhere?
(sorry if you've answered some of those, didn't want to reread the entire thread. also, can you boot into target disk mode?)
Luckily I have all my files backed up (I've been quite vigilant on that front!) here on the TiBook and some are sitting on my iDisk so that is fortunate.
I have managed on a couple of occasions to get the drive mounted in Firewire Target Disk Mode. But again this has only sporadically successful: I managed some time ago to get it mounted and to install a clean version of OS X on the iBook... but the last time I tried the Finder got the spinning wheel on the TiBook until the icon of the iBook drive mounted, then when I double clicked the drive to open it I got the spinning wheel again for 5 or 10 minutes until the window appeared on the desktop and so any activity with the disk produced a spinning wheel as if it had to wait for 5 or 10 minutes or so for things to happen. In some ways it was like doing stuff with the iDisk on a really slow connection way back before many of the improvements were made to the networking of the iDisk... know what I mean?
Anyway I think you are right. I will bite the bullit and send this in to the nearest Apple repair centre and at the very least get a £50 diagnosis from them.