Ibook g4 wont load

Question

hi my ibook g4 with lepoard 10.5.8 wont load up,when i press the power button the fan wisses and the chime goes then the apple logo come up with the colour spinny thing and thats it stays on that till you force it to shut down with the power button,any ideas

Answer 1

You may be able to get your machine to start up further, by holding
the Shift key down immediately after the boot chime and keep the
key held down until you get a login window; you'd apply the admin
user password at that point to continue startup into SafeBoot mode.
When running in Safe boot mode, you could run Disk Utility (see GO
in the main Finder window; locate Utilities folder> Disk Utility) and on
the Macintosh HD as seen in the utility's sidebar, chose to run the
'repair disk permissions' selection. When done, note messages; and
quit the Utility. Then, restart the computer to see if it can start normally.
• Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe mode:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1455
• OS X Maintenance and Troubleshooting:
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
• Resolve startup issues & perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1417 (this gets into more advanced ideas)
If you have the OS X Install disc for the system running in the computer,
you may be able to start the computer with that system install disc in the
optical drive, while holding the C key down, and when Installer loads,
choose from the Installer's main menu bar, options as noted; one of them
is Disk Utility. This can be used to 'repair disk' and other functions. In order
to run the computer normally from its system on the hard disk drive after,
you'll have to note the other options in the Installer's main menu bar after
you quit Disk Utility. One of them is to choose a Startup Disk, use it.
If the computer's hard disk drive is getting overly full of content, such as
saved images, music, and other user-generated stuff, it may be time to
consider removing the excess; and once copied to an external archive,
erase the contents you've archived from your user account.
The actual computer specifications, RAM installed; & HDD capacities of
both free space and used space (total capacity, vs. percentage free) so
as to see if the drive is actually getting too full. The problem may be in
more than one area; given it is an older computer and probably worn.
Chances are the computer could have most anything going on in it; since
it is several years old and portable computers with runtime on their parts
would tend to need a new replacement hard disk drive installed. That also
means a new installation of the system from scratch on a prepared hard
disk drive. There are other means to do all of this, if or when needed.
There is a web site with a guide of repair instructions at http://ifixit.com
from this page, you can select your computer model, build version, etc:
iBook guides: http://www.ifixit.com/Browse/iBook
The screws and miscellaneous important parts inside a compact and
portable designed computer lend themselves to damage, so be care-
ful if you decide to do a hardware repair or upgrade internal parts.
Your PowerPC G4 series iBook G4 is at least 5 years old, so it may
be due for some replacement parts; to include a new hard disk drive.
And if it does not have the most RAM installed it can run, that can be
of help in multi-tasking apps in OS X. The RAM upgrade slot, under
the keyboard, is also where in older G4 models is where the wireless
card would be located. However, last model iBooks had their card on
the logicboard; and also used a different version of RAM (PC2700.)
For general specs of most Apple computers, you could get a fairly
good download in the form of an app, from http://mactracker.ca
Good luck & happy computing!