IBook G4 grey screen,then "finder" folder with "?" flashing, please help!!
Hello again my fellow smarter than me mac lovers. OK, here is my problem. I used my ibook all night last night at work. Used it this morning just fine. My teenage daughter was using it and she stated that it froze on a screen she was looking at on possible you-tube. She proceeded to turn it off (not restart), and when she turned it back on it only responded with a grey screen. After a few minutes of the grey screen, a small blue folder will flash in the middle with the "finder" face/icon on it and a question mark flashing. It stays there a few minutes, but no cursor to click on the folder ect. After several minutes of that, the screen will go black and the computer will turn off. I have tried to reset the PRAM and PMU, but no go. Do not have discs, as this was a buy this past summer refurbished. I love my ibook and really hope it can be fixed. If there are any suggestions, please let me know. If not, I guess we will take a trip to the apple doctor. Thanks again for any help you might have.
Val
Hello Gengap,
This sounds like a failing harddrive issue....a computer starting up with a flashing question mark means that it is unable to find the software to load up the OS. Since you don't have the discs that should have come with the computer, you can try inserting a Tiger disc, or some other equivalent OS.
Start up from a disc, when the installer opens, open up Disk Utility. In Disk Utility, you should see a harddrive appear on the top left - but if it is failing (this just happened to me on an iBook G4), then it might not be there at all.
So if you close out Disk Utility, and you try to proceed with the installation, if the disc is not being recognized, then it will not be available to select a destination disc to try a re-install.
You might be SOL in recovering any data that is on the drive. A replacement HD should be in order if you are unable to re-install the OS.
Once the replacement HD is in, when you go to set it up again, you'll want to install a fresh clean copy of the OS by erasing the HD (incase it's formatted to work for Winblows) - you'll want to re-format it to work for Mac OS (Extended), and then re-install.
I'm not sure how comfortable you are with taking computers apart or not but since you bought it second hand anyways, you won't be voiding any warranty's of any kind. I just did this very same procedure on a 12" iBook G4 800MHz.
Ifixit.com is a great place to find exactly what you are looking for with step-by-step troubleshooting guides to get your mac up and running again.
Please post back to let me know how it works.
<Edited by Moderator>
Jason
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