Ibook G3 700mhz dual drive dead after installing 10.3 please help!

Question

hello
this is my first apple mac and i bought a ibook g3 powerbook which is:
700mhz processor 512k level 2
128mb SDRAM + 256mb stick
20GB ultra ATA hard drive
combo drive
400mpbs firewire port
video VGA
i updated it to 10.2.4 from 10.1 and it worked absolutely great :O)
i then got a 10.3.4 disk this is when problems happened to 'narna' (my G3) i loaded disk first time i did an upgrade install and i did custom install (i didnt want printer drivers and languauges on so disabled them) about 10 mins later came up with error while installing so i quit install, restarted 'narna' and reset cd off again to upgrade....
the second time i forgot to deselect printer drivers and while installing them 'narna' froze. so i had to put power plug out to get it to restart up.
i switched back on and got a grey language screen telling me to press power button to restart. thats all i get...
i've tried option button with disk so i can select the drive from which to start it up and my drive is there with 10.3 on it with a red cross on the box. if i selct that drive to boot 'narna' up from it restarts computer and then while it loads i get the grey apple screen and then it freezes again but this time i get lots of grey/white lines across the screen...
i think thats all the information...what i'm after is there any way i can solve this etc without completely wiping my computer :O( i have the original 10.1 disks but i tried those i can get on and open OS9 on the computer and it shows my other OSX drive with 10.3 wrote next to it... but the restore disks dont seen to do anything with my computer as it just gives my same messages to restart/boot or takes me to drive then it crashes...
please please please help! i've never had an apple mac before so not sure what to do to help it....

Answer 1

Hi giantbutton,
A good first step after any significant crash on a mac, especially if it occurs during an installation of software etc, is to start up from your OS CD or DVD (just like you would if your were trying to install software) but to then run "DiskUtility" instead of the installer. You can access DiskUtility from the "Installer" menu on the menubar when booted from the Panther DVD.
Once Disk Utility is running select your Hard drive in the panel on the left of Disk Utility window and click on "repair disk". Disk Utility will test the drive and repair problems with its directory structures if it can.
Once the "repair disk" process is complete use the "repair permissions" process.
If the repair processes works then you can try a fresh installation of Panther. If not, then your best option is probably to wipe the drive and start from scratch on a "clean" disk.
It is always a good idea to use Disk Utility to "repair" the disk and permissions before installing any OS upgrade or major piece of software.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=162662
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25735 and
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120 provide some useful information
As far as the memory requirements go, it depends a lot on what you are doing with your computer. If you are running regular "office" type software, browsing the web , etc then 384 MB should be fine for Panther, though you may not want to run too many programs simultaneously. For "heavy duty" tasks (video editing and the like) , though it would be seriously limiting.
Cheers
Rod