Stuck in the blue screen, nothing seems to fix it

Ive had been reading your postings for some time now on the web.

My problem is that my ibook g4 800 12?do not want to start up, it stays in the bluescreen.

I am a musician and i use the book with a midi software named Reason live onstage. Last Wednesday, at the show, it froze, i did a forced restart and showed a blinking folder.

When i got home, it logged in normally, after a week,(today) it began with the blue screen only at starting up.

I read some of the tips at the apple site, but nothing seems to work.

Other facts:

I logged in at safe mode and took the classic system fonts and deleted it, was that bad?

After login at safe mode several times, erasing starting up items and doing all what apple site suggest, now the computer isn’t able to run on safe mode anymore.

I repaired my permissions thru the single mode, as i read on one of your postings...and nothing.

I have all my original cds but the computer is not able to start up from the cd even if they can be sliding inside.

MacOS 10.3.9

Any clue?
Thanks for the attention
JC

I repaired my permissions thru the single mode, as i read on one of your postings...and nothing.
I assume you mean that you repaired the filesystem using 'fsck' (not the permissions).
Otherwise, that is the first thing you should do - see this Apple document:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

I have all my original cds but the computer is not able to start up from the cd even if they can be sliding inside.


Try zapping the PRAM and resetting Open Firmware as explained on the following page: http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
Then try again restarting from the Install CD - insert the CD, then restart and then hold down the C key after you hear the chime.

I zapped the PRAM, try to boot with the cd but nothing...blue screen.

Tried what you said, nothing. Same problem...can it be a logic board problem...?:confused:

I assume you mean that you repaired the filesystem using 'fsck' (not the permissions).
Otherwise, that is the first thing you should do - see this Apple document:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214



Try zapping the PRAM and resetting Open Firmware as explained on the following page: http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
Then try again restarting from the Install CD - insert the CD, then restart and then hold down the C key after you hear the chime.

I did all of this, nothing seems to work. Then i ran the hardware tester cd, it found logicboard and the other things ok.
It booted one time, it was at the time i needed to leave home so i decided to close the mac to keep checking it at work.
Two things happened;
Once i close the mac, the apple logo at the outside kept glowing so the computer did not went on sleep mode.
After some minutes, it turned off automatically.
When booted it again, blue screen and no start up...
what do you think?
thanks again

I zapped the PRAM, try to boot with the cd but nothing...blue screen.
What about resetting Open Firmware?

And when you tried to boot from the CD, did you get some indication that you were in fact booting from the CD? Did you hear the CD spinning? Did it look different at the beginning from the normal OS X startup?

It booted one time
If the machine was able to successfully boot one time but fails other times with the same configuration (i.e. booting the same way) then that would seem to indicate a hardware problem.

Have you tried booting it from an external disk (that has OS X installed on it)?

I did all of this, nothing seems to work.
Please be more specific and detailed about exactly what you did and what happened. Don't just say "I did all of this" - explain in detail what you did and what you saw at each step. Use lots of words.

In particular, when you did the 'fsck' from single-user mode, did it find anything to fix?

Please be more specific and detailed about exactly what you did and what happened. Don't just say "I did all of this" - explain in detail what you did and what you saw at each step. Use lots of words.

In particular, when you did the 'fsck' from single-user mode, did it find anything to fix?
I will try to be more specific. When i booted on single mode I typed:
/sbin/fsck -y. It say then; Volume is journaled. No checking performed.
Then i typed; /sbin/fsck -f. The screen started to check for a little while and then appear to be ok.

The cd drive spin, but it stop once the blue screen appear.
It booted once from the cd, went freeze, couldnt do anything.

I cant boot on safe mode.
I have an external HD but I dont think it has the MacOs10 installed. Bad for me i guess!!

I did try Zapping the Pram and resetting open firmware.

I think you need outside help to proceed farther.
E.g. get an external drive that has OS X installed on it (maybe take your external drive to a Mac store or a friend with a Mac and install OS X there)
or try get an external CD drive (friend or Mac store) and use that CD drive to boot from the Install CD.

But one last thing to try: Get a CD drive cleaning kit and run it on your drive. Maybe it is just dirty. That seems unlikely to cause the symptoms you report, but might be worth trying.

Also check this Apple doc on startup problems in case there is anything you haven't tried:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106464

I remove the Battery and power cord for a while. It started from the cd. I have the disk utility in front of me, not sure what to do.
Can I connect my external HD and do a back up? Can I install the mac os 10 to my external HD from this point?

I remove the Battery and power cord for a while. It started from the cd. I have the disk utility in front of me, not sure what to do.
Look in the menus at the top of the screen to find the one that says "Disk Utility", then use it to do the "Repair Disk" (different from "Repair Disk Permissions" !)
Can I connect my external HD and do a back up?Can I install the mac os 10 to my external HD from this point?
I don't think you can do a backup when booted from the CD.
But I see no reason why you couldn't install OS X on the external hard drive. If you don't need the files that are on the external hard drive then you could do an "erase & install" on the external hard drive. The install procedure will ask you which disk to install on if there is more than one (i.e. your internal and external disks).
I don't think it is possible to install OS X on the external hard drive without erasing it first - i.e. losing all of the files that are currently on the external hard drive.

Im installing an older version of the MACos X (from the cd) and restoring older files. is that ok?
The disk utility gave an option of restoring from a source to a destination, isnt that a back up option? It recognize my external hd...
Right now im in middle of installation, will let you know what happened.
thank for your time

Ohhhh, it got frozen! It was onthe Processing Base System part 2 86% completed

Updating,
I tried to boot on safe mode, now it showed a kernel panic, it say something like
panic(cpu 0) Unable to find driver for this platform: PowerBook6,3
Kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0

Updating,
I tried to boot on safe mode, now it showed a kernel panic, it say something like
panic(cpu 0) Unable to find driver for this platform: PowerBook6,3
Kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0
That's the sort of thing that you would expect from an unsuccessful installation (like what you reported in your previous message).

I'm still suspecting hardware problems but try reinstalling from the CD again.
The problem might also be that your Install CD is faulty (or that your CD drive is dirty).

I tried most of the options people have suggested above, but nothing seems to fix the issue.

So finally what I did is,

1. started my mac with single user mode, "Apple Key + S"
2. cd /Users/[my_account_name]
3. chmod +r [Library, Desktop, Documents, Movies, Pictures, Music]
4. Booted mac using Ubuntu Live CD
5. Mounted os x drive
sudo mkdir /mnt/macosx
sudo /sbin/parted
select /dev/hda
print - (This will tell where os x is installed)
quit
sudo mount -t hfsplus /dev/hda3 /mnt/macosx
6. Copy all the required data from Ubuntu file manager to an external drive
7. Shutdown Ubuntu, Start mac with OS X installation DVD
8. Reinstall OS X

This whole experience was very much frustrating; I still don’t know why my iBook G4 didn’t go beyond blue screen. I had OS X 10.4.3 with all latest updates as of yesterday.

For unknown reasons, OS X installtion program was not mounting external drive. So I was forced to use Ubuntu Live CD. thankfully I had that CD handy.

Hi,
Ive been out for a while. I took my ibbok to a the repair shop, they told me it is the logic board. Something tell me it can be something else.
How trusty is the hardware tester cd? everytime i run it it shows no problem with logicboard.

whats Ubantu live cd?

thanks for joining again to help me

Most repair shops say "It's a logic board problem", when many times it isn't. Same thing happened to me.
It could be, but many times it isn't.

Ubuntu Live CD is a cd that you can start your computer from. It's different from OS X. It's free too. You can order a free CD (free shipping too!), or make one yourself.

You can get it to burn yourself here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download
or order it here: https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

If you do get it, make sure it's the Live CD, for Mac.