Won't boot up in 10.4 anymore?!?!?!

Question

I am baffled....I used my 2 year old powerbook G4 1.5mhz one evening for emails and light Internet use. When I awoke in the morning I checked my email and powered it down. I came home from work and turned on my machine. All that happened was a repeated restart error (over and over and over).
I ran the hardware utility and it reports no hardware problems. I took it to an Apple certified service dealer and was told "it's likely the logic board". The machine will run with a fresh install of 10.3.9. As soon as I install 10.4 it goes from the gray apple screen, then to a blank blue screen where it stops doing anything.
I bought this Mac to get away from blue screens!
How can a logic board go but not report a hardware issue? I am not thoroughy convinced but I suppose maybe there is something on the board that 10.3 doesn't require to boot that 10.4 does? How can 10.3.9 run just fine and not 10.4.9?

Answer 1

Welcome to the Apple discussions.
Sorry to hear about your operating system issue. I would initially agree with you that it's a stretch that the logic board is distinguishing between Panther and Tiger. Have you scanned these discussions to see if anyone else reported a similar problem? Also scan the OS X discussion.
I would first look at the hard drive, and perhaps you've done this already - reinitialize the hard drive, writing zero's to it (which resets the bad sector table on the disk), then install 10.4. Once you do the initial 10.4 install (not any Tiger upgrades), do the symptoms return? If yes, I might get a copy of DiskWarrior to analyze and fix the hard drive if it finds issues.
Do you have another hard drive that you could use to install Tiger on, to eliminate that it's a problem with your existing drive?
Also, when you upgrade from 10.4.x to 10.4.9, you might want to use the combo update, which incorporates all prior updates. Sometimes the software update function doesn't update everything correctly, which can lead to odd behaviours.