IBOOK G4 start up problems

[ndcarper]

OK I bet you guys are gonna say not another failed logic board video card problem. Ive gone through that and after getting on the phone multiple times with Apple over a month they caved and agreed to replace the board.

Everything went fine for 3 months and now all of the sudden i get all sort of weird symptoms like slow startups once it does start up and get frequent freezes.

g4 2004 256 mb built in ram 512 additional ram recently replaced logic board


Ok when I attempt to restart I hear a whooshing sound then like a toot or beep for 2-3 seconds and then nothing.
With the computer off I use shift ctrl cmd power I hear a toot the keyboard comes on but the screen stays blank. Repeating with shift ctrl cmd power with the computer on I get another "toot" and then a world globe animation the turns becoming a folder with ? then happy face alternating 8-10x until I get the Apple logo and startup.

now when I run system profiler I only had 256 mb built in ram that shows up now.
It no longer recognizes the additional 512 mb.

ANY IDEAS? Should I consider repairing it or just remove the ram I added and use it with just the built in.

[M.Brane]

I wonder if they screwed something on reassembly. iBooks are not the easiest machines to work on. Lots of delicate parts, and potential for problems.

You could remove the additional RAM, and see if it stabilizes things.

Looks like it's having trouble finding the boot device too. Is this the original drive? It could be dying.

BTW I nuked your duplicate thread. With the amount of traffic on this forum it's extremely unlikely that someone would would see one thread, but not the other. Keeping it all in one place makes things much easier for all of us.

[yeungfeng]

If you can, backup the hard drive, do it first thing. Unless you don't care about what is stored on that hard drive. I would, also, suspect the hard drive, and if it is, you don't have long with that drive. If you can get it to boot don't shut it down until it's backed up. It could be the last startup it does.

When did the RAM go in the ibook?

[ndcarper]

RAM is after market ram sold with the computer as a special and installed for free at time of purchase.

Any suggestions as wo where to get the hard drive replaced at a reasonable price?. I have a 40 gig hard drive but will opt for a 20 gig for my purposes.

Should I remove the ram first to see if things improve? Can I do this myself if so how?

Is it difficult to replace the hard drive myself?

I won't take to my local authorized repair service. it is a non-Apple national chain. They installed an airport card on a previous ibook and it never worked quite right again dying shortly afterwards.

Sorry about the double post. Wasn't sure where to post it. Won't do that again.

[ndcarper]

Ok
Only problem I have is with startup.
Diskwarrior techtool and SpeedTools all gave my disk a perfect health rating.
System profiler has all tests passed at start up and recognizes my RAM now.
No more spinning globe on start up
It all just stopped

HOWEVER
it takes 3-4 attempts at startup with SHIFT-CNTRL-OPTION tgo start up.
I still get the 3 second tone and whirling sound.
Start up is kinda weird. I get the tone, screen is blank and all sounds stop.
Then after a few minutes the screen comes on and I get very slow startup.

[M.Brane]

Perhaps an NVRAM reset will help. Worth a shot anyway.

Your startup problem seems to me like the system is having trouble finding something it needs to boot. Whether that's hardware or software related is hard to tell at this point. Do you have an external drive or a CD/DVD that you can boot from to see if it's something specific to your internal drive?

[unclemac]

The globe icon means it is trying to boot to NetBoot....searching for a network server setup to boot client Macs. Will time out after something like 60-90 seconds, and then search the other buses (internal HD, FW, optical drive) for a boot volume. If you get a full boot, go to sys pref pane and reselect your internal HD.


You can also hold down just the option key to see your boot options. But still reset your boot volume. See that globe (labeled Network Startup) in your boot pref pane? Don't select it. And don't hold down the N key when you boot. Unless you have a NetBoot server.

The toot sounds like a firmware tone, maybe, in which case you would want to try and do a OF reset.

[M.Brane]

The globe icon means it is trying to boot to NetBoot...

Good catch uncle! That one went right over my head.

[ndcarper]

What is an OF reset and how do I do the NVRAM reset? Doesn't the computer prompt you for the NVRAM reset? The spinning globe and folder search went away on its own after 1-2 reboots.
My wife doesn't read this forum so its safe for me to write this. I told her the computer is history so bought her a newMacBook. Now I am trying to figure out how to fix this one so I have a portable for my own use.

[unclemac]

So how is the ibook booting now? Still a long delay or any other unusual symptoms?

[ndcarper]

PROGRESS!

I opened up the computer. I removed the Airport express card and removed the ram shield and reseated the additional ram.

Next I put the ram shield on and tightened the screws and restarted the computer.
SUCCESS chimes and log in screen though still delayed Typed in password and desk top appeared with only a small looking glass in the right upper corner and when I put the mouse over the what was present of the menu bar and got the spinning beachball over it.

Next put in the airport express and rebooted and it wouldn't boot and got teh ram tone and blank screen.

Removed all the ram shield screws and only used the left upper screw in and reinstalled the airport card and keyboard. This time started up like a charm again but no desktop again, Just a blue blank start up screen.

Restarted and ran Applejack. Applejack would not proceed past checking catalog hierarchy for maybe 4 minutes and then complete the rest of the auto cycle.

Rebooted from Applejack. Still had slow start up. After booting still have blank blue screen with just the looking glass in blue circle on white background in right upper corner.After 5 minutes the rest of the desktop appeared except for the menu additions such as clock and airport.

Restarted from my my Firewire external drive with OSX startup disk. Ran repair disk. After checking it was noted no repairs necessary. Numerous permission repairs needed and performed. Computer restarted. Again desktop loadsvery slowly and but this time complete.

So I figure I had some sort of pressure phenomena causing my ram to malfunction???

Is the failure for menu bar to reload due to a faulty hard drive? So two things going on?

Do I have a VIRUS?

Should I consider a complete erasure and re-installation of 10.46?

[unclemac]

Just about the only way to ensure no hardware issues is a clean OS to test. I would go to 10.4.8 or .9 to get the most stable OS possible.

The small window/looking glass thing is weird. Saw that some years ago in both 9 and early versions of 10 (10.1 or early 10.2) when cloning an older OS to newer hardware. Could it be that your OS is not compatible with your ibook? Retail disks are the best bet.....are you installing 10.4 from disks that came with a different Mac?

[ndcarper]

Correction it is the spotlight icon
I upgraded to 10.4.1 from 10.39 with upgrade disk and am upgraded to 10.4.10 now.
Everything is running fine figure.
I actually prefer my new ibook over my wifes macbook because of screen size.
RAM problem was result of pressure from airport card a nd keyboard over the ram shield. loosening the screws on the ram shield solved that problem.
Oh well. Thing is why should have it become a problem after 2-3 years?

[ndcarper]

Finally figured out how to remove the aftermarket ram that has been in there for 3 ye3ars and everythinig runs perfectly now. Techtool gives it 100% bill of health now.