[iBook] Hard drive problems

[Eric Richardson]

>At 8:10 AM +0900 2/7/05, Eric Richardson wrote:
>
>>I have been having problems with my G4 iBook, 60 gig, 640 MB, using 
>>Panther lately. The problem is that it will just freeze up on me 
>>and when I reboot it can't find the system folder on the hard drive.
>
>[snipped]
>
>Try resetting PRAM NVRAM. It can't hurt and it is sometimes the cure 
>for the  AWOL System.
>
>http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
>
>I think it's rare for system freezes to occur in Panther. Could you 
>describe what you mean by "it will just freeze up"? What exactly do 
>you observe?
>
>  Mary

I have tried that. It seemed to work once or twice, but not many 
other times, so I think that the couple of times it did work, it was 
a coincidence. I have tried taking the battery out so it has no power 
for a couple of minutes. That didn't work either. I haven't tried a 
formal PMU reset. Maybe next time, since I found the directions 
linked to from the page you sent above (control-option-shift-power 
while the computer is off, then wait for 5 seconds and try to 
restart).

The freeze usually happens within a couple of minutes of waking up. 
At first it responds and then will respond for a little while, but 
then... By freezing, what happens is that the mouse cursor will move, 
but nothing will respond, the file menus won't open, the dock doesn't 
respond, programs and windows won't select, and the keyboard and 
keyboard commands won't respond either; neither does 
command-option-escape nor a simple pressing of the power button to 
shut it down. It requires a hard reboot, command-control-power to 
shut down. Sometimes it is accompanied by a spinning beach ball but 
not usually. I have tried waiting for up to 5-10 minutes, but it 
doesn't stop whatever it is doing to not respond. I don't hear any 
whirring or feel any vibration of the hard drive being accessed. 
Sometimes, I suspect it is something like trying to access the hard 
drive while the battery program is calculating the time remaining 
either for battery power or to be recharged, but it isn't always that 
either. As in last Saturday, when it had been awake and all I was 
doing was typing in TextEdit for about 20 minutes and tried to save 
what I was typing. That was the time it froze, and I couldn't get the 
internal HD to boot for 30 hours or so.

Anyway, after the hard reboot, it can't find the system on the 
internal hard drive for varying amounts of time, anywhere from 15 to 
30 minutes up to about 30 hours. The last two times that it occurred, 
it found the system on the hard drive only after I had worked from a 
firewire disk based 10.3 system for a couple of hours and then tried 
to restart it again. All the while (the couple of hours) that I 
worked on the firewire system, it still didn't ever see the internal 
hard disk until I restarted.

BTW, I tried starting up in target disk mode, and the screen comes on 
like it is in target disk mode with the floating firewire symbol, but 
when I connect my other iBook, it won't see the drive then either.

Thanks for your consideration.

Eric <---- in England, and soon back to Seoul.