Won't Boot past Apple Logo

Lamo · 19 May 2008 at 12:35

Folks,

I'm looking for some help and please bear with me as I have never used a mac before.

We have a an iBook G4 14" at work and today we went to turn it on and it won't boot past the Apple Logo.

When I press the power key I here the fan spin and can hear hard drive nosie but i just get a black screen and then the grey screen with the Apple logo and it won't go any further I don't hera any chimes at all.

I have tried to remove the battery and press and hold the power button for 5 seconds i have also tried holding Ctrl, Shift, Apple key and power button. When i do this the white light on the front blinks and I get one beep but after that I still get the same boot problem.

I did phone Apple but as we bought this in 2004 they would not offer support unless we paid £40.

The other issue i have is that somebody has taken it upon themselves to bin the box that had the recovery/OS install disc in it and now I can't even re-install the OS.

So I guess I'm asking has anybody seen this problem before or know how I'm going to fix it?

Thanks in advance,

Mark L

radikal_dj · 19 May 2008 at 13:50

My suggestion would be to get hold of an OS/Recovery disc - Do you know what OS was installed on the Mac?

MrMoonX · 19 May 2008 at 15:50

try getting hold of some panther or tiger discs and reinstall the os

Lamo · 19 May 2008 at 16:49

yeah thats what i was going to do. it was 10.4.9 but the problem is I now need to go about securing budget to buy a disc and that is not going to be easy.

I can't load a copy disc on incase we get audited and it shows as an illegal copy. I was just hoping there was another way to fix the problem without an OS reload.

MagicBoy · 19 May 2008 at 18:13

Lamo said:
I can't load a copy disc on incase we get audited and it shows as an illegal copy. I was just hoping there was another way to fix the problem without an OS reload.

There's no serial/key number on OS X, Apple track the serial of the hardware instead.

Lamo · 19 May 2008 at 21:51

MagicBoy said:
There's no serial/key number on OS X, Apple track the serial of the hardware instead.

We'll that shows the total lack of knowledge I have with Mac and how they work.

Thanks for the advice. Download of 10.5 it is then.

Beepcake · 19 May 2008 at 22:01

Lamo said:
We'll that shows the total lack of knowledge I have with Mac and how they work.

Thanks for the advice. Download of 10.5 it is then.

10.5 (leopard) would be piracy, you need do download 10.4 (tiger).. It would be like installing a download of vista on a borked xp machine.

The bit after 10.4 is just the patch version (like xp sp 2) so don't panic when it installs a lower version than you had, software update will sort it.

MagicBoy · 19 May 2008 at 22:18

Beepcake said:
10.5 (leopard) would be piracy, you need do download 10.4 (tiger).

Indeed.

Leopard is the first retail OS I've bought since DOS 6. £69 is good value, unlike the questionable and confusing price structure of say Vista.