Gray screen when turning on iBook G4 with tiny file folder in center of screen blinking the finder icon and a question mark. Have tried several things. Any help please??

Question

Gray screen when turning on iBook G4 with tiny file folder in center of screen blinking finder icon and question mark.  I cannot figure this out.  Tried everything I know.  Can someone help please???

Answer 1

Hello,
Ideally you need to boot from the disk as you have no other media advisable. (e.g your hard drive)
Without some form of system disk or restore you wont be able to diagnose the problem with your hard drive.
By using a Mac OS X system disk you can load up the Disk Utilities and repair the hard drive if shown it's available. If it's not available you would need to replace the hard drive and reinstall Mac OS. Without any disk to support you, you are going to struggle.
You can obtain replacement disk, both retail copies or system disk on the Internet.
If you know what version of Mac OS X you had install (I'm guessing that it would have been 10.3, but would recommend 10.4) A retail disk is normally black with a colored 'X' on it, while system disk are always.
Always try and obtain a copy of the system restore disks (Gray) for your iBook
Ebay is another outlet that has genuine system disk for sell, but like any auction site, it's as and when someone is selling them.
The only other thing you could do is take it to a Apple repair agent who could check the hard drive on your behalf. That way you can get confirmation if the problem is the drive or some other fault. They may even help restore the OS for you.
I can't think of anything else to try without some form of disk to help you.
There maybe just one other small thing you could try.
When booting up, firmly rest your palm of your hand on the iBook next to the tracker pad on the left side.
If it works then it's another fault that I'm aware of.