doctormelodious
Registered
Greetings,
My iBook G4 (see sig below) has an intermittent problem. It usually sits on my desk, plugged into the power adaptor, always on. The only time I ever do a shutdown is when I'm taking it with me to the airport. Here's where the problem happens -- WHEN it happens. I start it up and one of two things happens:
1. I get the old question mark disk icon, or
2. I get a plain grey screen
Sometimes, if I do a manual force reboot (cmd-ctrl-power) several times in a row, it will finally boot correctly. The lovely grey Apple logo shows up, and all is well.
Other times, when that fails, I boot from a DiskWarrior CD. Sometimes it can't see the internal HD. Other times it sees it, and when I run DW, it does find errors to fix. Yet other times, DW sees it, and finds NO errors.
When the iBook is working, the internal HD's SMART status shows as Good.
So, whatup with this? Is the drive actually going bad (SMART status notwithstanding), or is it maybe the controller or some other logic board component? I could chuck the iBook and get a nice new MacBook, but this 2004 antique still suits my needs.
Thoughts, anyone??
Thanks!
DM
P.S. BTW, the internal HD backs up to an external FW drive daily, so there will be minimum heartache if/when the thing totally bites it.
My iBook G4 (see sig below) has an intermittent problem. It usually sits on my desk, plugged into the power adaptor, always on. The only time I ever do a shutdown is when I'm taking it with me to the airport. Here's where the problem happens -- WHEN it happens. I start it up and one of two things happens:
1. I get the old question mark disk icon, or
2. I get a plain grey screen
Sometimes, if I do a manual force reboot (cmd-ctrl-power) several times in a row, it will finally boot correctly. The lovely grey Apple logo shows up, and all is well.
Other times, when that fails, I boot from a DiskWarrior CD. Sometimes it can't see the internal HD. Other times it sees it, and when I run DW, it does find errors to fix. Yet other times, DW sees it, and finds NO errors.
When the iBook is working, the internal HD's SMART status shows as Good.
So, whatup with this? Is the drive actually going bad (SMART status notwithstanding), or is it maybe the controller or some other logic board component? I could chuck the iBook and get a nice new MacBook, but this 2004 antique still suits my needs.
Thoughts, anyone??
Thanks!
DM
P.S. BTW, the internal HD backs up to an external FW drive daily, so there will be minimum heartache if/when the thing totally bites it.