Help no boot up!!
 

My G4 running 10.2.8 willl not boot up. It will power on and all i get is the Apple logo and the spinning lines. I have tried APPLE+OPT.+S and it hung. I have reset with the front panel button. I have unplugged powered off etc. I was able to use Target disk mode with my iBook but was not able to repair permissions on my G4 drive. I kept getting an error but i was able to access all the stuff on the drive. Pictures/Apps etc.

Any ideas of whats happening or what i can do ?? Is my Boot drive dead??

thanks

matt

Well if you were able to access everything on the drive then it clearly isn't dead. Get a copy of DiskWarrior for starters and see what that does for you.

But before doing anything else, while you are still able to mount the drive in target disk mode you should immediately do a backup of everything you want. Might be a good time to buy an inexpensive firewire or USB drive if you don't have a spare one already. If there's a hardware problem all the data on that drive is at risk.

Worst case, you may need to get a replacement internal drive.

thanks Boyd. I have 2 hd's in the G4. If my media drive is bad will this happen? I hear both drive spin up when i power on but then it just hangs. Would the second internal mount in target disk mode as well?? beacause it didnt mount. This was the first time I mounted this computer in target disk mode so im not sure if both drives mount or just the boot volume. Luckily I have no really important projects on there right now but as you can imagine its just a big pain in the a**. I will look into disk warrior and also disconnect my second internal to see if that is the cause.

Only the boot drive will mount in target mode (or at least that's been my experience on a multi-drive G4). It's very possible that there's just some minor damage to a system file which is preventing boot. Then again, it could be a sign of a failing drive. Fortunately, the intenal ATA drives for the G4 are inexpensive and easy to replace.

Disk Warrior is something you should probably have handy anyway...

OT - anyone recommend a good hard disk util (I have DiskWarrior - doesn't work) that can repair a fizzed out Partition Map? I've tried Drive Genius which sort of can recover a few files, but it's not very useful.