It's alive! was:Re: [iBook] Installed security update now iBook will not boot

[Robert Crawford]

I have some good news. My iBook is back with the living. I am currently
reinstalling my applications from my fire wire external drive. Of course, it
was only after I started the reinstall that it occurred to me that I should
have unplugged the drive from my mini and plugged it into my iBook to do the
reinstall. As it is, I am doing the restore over the airport; yes, it is
taking a while.
 
I installed the hard drive that I ordered. I have the specs posted above the
messages (I only included the messages that were relevant to the problem and
my trouble shooting). I do not see some of the steps I also made in these
letters, I also ran the apple hardware diagnostic disk. It was unable to
find the hard drive. I also ran Tech Tool; it was also unable to find the
drive or the volumes.
 
I got the new drive and put it in (I will add that I am not sure that the
drive replacement could be made to be any harder without putting some real
effort into making it harder). After it booted up, it seemed to be running a
lot better. I portioned the drive into volumes, a boot volume about 10G and
a data volume of about 85gig. It then said that it could not install to the
volumes. I did the reset-nvram and reset-all, and tried again. It then
installed just fine.
 
I still did not fix the broken track pad connector. Even though I was in
that far. I was just in no mood to start soldering on the main board (one
problem at a time, otherwise troubleshooting becomes next to impossible).
 
Thank you to all who helped. Particular thanks to Mary, James, and Mike of
MPS Consulting of Bend OR (Mike, this is also going to a iBook list).
 
Specs for the part I put in.
Model
Brand
HITACHI
Series
Travelstar 5K100
Model
HTS541010G9AT00 (13G1591)
Performance
Interface
ATA-6
Capacity
100GB
Cache
8MB
Average Seek Time
12ms
Average Latency
5.5ms
RPM
5400 RPM
Physical Spec
Form Factor
2.5"
 
My problem started with this message.
I installed today's security update. now my G3 600mhz 14" iBook, running
10.3.9, will not boot.
I have had several symptoms throughout the day. A couple of times it sat
there for about an hour with a blank screen. It came up several times with
the message to type "mac-boot" ( I may be remembering the syntax wrong) I
tried that, I also tried typing "shut-down" at that point.
 
Later it came up to my background screen bout would do nothing and go no
further. Now it is sitting there with a OS 9 folder icon in the middle of
the screen and sometimes the icon alternates between a face and a question
mark in the middle of the icon.
 
And this one
I went online and got the reset instructions (unplug, remove battery, press
reset button). This did not fix the issue. I am still getting a blank grey
screen (once I got the black apple).
 
And this one
I am now in the process of reinstalling the OS.
 
And this one
It still is not booting. I tried booting with cmd-v. It gave me no messages.
I tried doing an OS reinstall. I got the message, "there were errors
installing the software." I then ran disk utility and got sever al red
errors with fsck. 
 
I then tried a delete and reinstall (each of these steps takes several hours
to run) and got the same, 10.3 "there were errors installing the software,"
message. 
 
The Apple Hardware Test disk is telling me that there is no mass storage
device found (it also failed to see my USB mouse). Is it possible that this
update killed my hard drive?
 
 And this one
I tried repair permissions. I also tried verify, from the OS dick, I got
"the underlying task has reported failure on exit (-9972)"
 
I then tried erase and a reinstall. It did not work. The erase seems to have
worked and the OS disk ran at normal speed after I did that. However, I got
the message The software can not be installed, please try again (something
like that). Now the iBook is back to running very slow as I try to open the
disk utility again.
 
And this one
I tried something different this time, no difference in the results. "1 HFS
volume repaired successfully, 1 volume can not be repaired"
 
What I tried was removing the memory and airport first. This was after the
last install (like the other attempts) hung in the write stage of the
install.
 
And this one
Well, I am pretty well ready to give up. At this point, after several erases
(using the different options) it is not longer even showing anything under
available options in the installer.
 
It pretty much does not work; which is a bother because I am planning to
leave the country for a new job in a couple of weeks and I was planning to
take it with me. What will be worse is listening to my "you are so dumb for
having bought an Apple" friends gloat. The good part is that none of them
know I was having a problem with it this weekend (I didn't tell them why I
was not out riding with them, I just did not show up).
 
I suspect the hard drive. I may order a new one. Will any 2.5" ata drive
work? I realize that it is a neat total disassembly to get at the HD, I may
fix the broken mouse connector while I am in it (although I may not. I would
need to get a SMT soldering iron to do that).
 
For all that, I may just take my mac mini. I am pretty sure that I can get a
keyboard when I get to China and I was told that my apartment already has a
computer, so that means that there is a monitor. The mini, itself, does not
take a lot of room. It is a thought.