Looks serious. possible hardware problem. unable to install any OS.

Question

Hi,
Powerbook was working absolutely fine. Stupidly, I attempted to watch a partially (97%) downloaded (with Bittorrent) movie (.wmv -- WM3) in Windows Media Player 9 in full screen mode. Half way through the movie freezes. I try and get out of full screen, nothing changes -- the whole machine is frozen. I restart. During boot there's a serious error -- kernel panic I think -- telling you to restart machine in various languages including Japanese. Restart. Freezes during start up window progress bar. Restart. Freeze.
I start up from the Jaguar disk 1 start up disk, go into Disk Utilties, repair disk -- errors found, and fixed apparently. Restart. Freeze.
I start up from DiskWarrior 4 start up disk and start it on the drive. Step 6: "Overlapped files detected" with a number after, and it starts taking ages. I left DW working for nearly two days until it seemed to have frozen (still on step 6).
I connect the sick PB to an iMac via firewire and start up the PB in disk target mode, the PB's drive appears on the desktop of the iMac and I'm able to easily with no problems copy off all my personal files. At that point I thought all was saved -- I was out of hot water, no further real problems. All I had to do is wipe the drive and reinstall etc.
I reformatted the drive from the iMac choosing to zero aswell. The PB's drive appears on the desktop empty and looking fine.
Start up the PB using Panther retail install disk one click install, it goes through checking the install disk then starts to check the target disk or actually install on the target disk -- at that point kernel panic -- 'restart machine' in various languages including Jap. Start up again using Panther disk, this time choose Disk Utilities to attempt to refromat the drive again, kernel panic before Disk Utilties even gets fully open.
I start up the PB using Jaguar retail install disk one, choose Disk Utilties -- fine. I reformat the drive, this time not bothering with zeroing. Fine. Go through to install Jaguar. Again it checks the install disk fine, then immediately after, kernel panic.
I tried partitioning the drive into two using Disk Utilties on Jaguar start up disk. My thinking was, maybe the start of the drive is damaged. Then tried to install onto partition two: panic. Just to check, tried to install to partition one: panic.
It's a 60GB drive. I installed Jaguar onto it ages ago successfully. The only difference was when doing it ages ago is I used the PB's internal CD/DVD drive. That had since broken and I've been using an external firewire CD/DVD drive -- all the above various Jaguar / Panther attempts were from the external drive. I just received a 2nd hand internal CD/DVD drive I bought on eBay -- I was blindly/stupidly hoping that using an internal CD drive would solve my problem but it hasn't.
What's the problem? It seems as if the initial Windows Movie Player crash has caused this, but that can't be can it? That was a software crash and I've since reformated the drive. There shouldn't be any remnants of that in anyway. So it's a hardware problem? But it was working fine before the crash and nothing has happened to the PB between the crash and now. But there's no two ways about it -- right now the PB seems terminally broken.
Any suggestions how to get my PB working again?
TIA,
John.

Answer 1

It's intalled. So it turns out I was lying when I said "The only difference was when doing it ages ago is I used the PB's internal CD/DVD drive." -- I forgot to mention there was no AirPort card in the PB when I installed Jag ages ago.
Also a small note: it seems an internal CD drive was necessary in the end. When the Panther install restarted and requested disk 2 I couldn't get it to recognize disk 2 from the external drive -- had to use the internal one to continue (although I didn't spend too much time/effort trying to get the external one to work but on the face of it it didn't seem to). (Although I can imagine there may be a way of installing stuff from disk 2 after having customized the install to not require anything from disk 2 for the first main automated install possibly? I may sell the internal CD/DVD drive if so as otherwise it was a waste of money).
Having installed Panther I put the AirPort card and the 2nd memory back in and started up -- all's apparently OK, but of course there's good reason not to be convinced of that. I didn't customize the Panther install as I wanted (because I didn't expect it to work). Not sure if I dare try wiping and reinstalling.
Obviously I'd feel happier knowing what the problem was/is. Looks like the AirPort card had something to do with it. But even when that was out the PB couldn't start from OS9. When formatting the drive (from OS X installer software) I'm sure I had the OS9 check box ticked. Even if I hadn't it wouldn't stop the OS9 CD working would it?; the hard drive just wouldn't appear once started up from the OS9 CD.
So I now have Panther up and running with both bits of memory in and the AirPort card in. I haven't messed around with/in Panther at all yet but on the face of it it seems fine.
Any ideas what the problem was/is? Any suggestions how to find out? Should I just ignore it and forget it ever happened (and cross my fingers and hope I never need to mess around with OS installs again)? Would be nice to know what's going on though. For a start it looks like if ever I want to install OS9 on it I won't be able to -- which actually may be something I want to do in the future possibly.
Thanks.