Startup problems on G3 iBook running OS X 10.4.11

Araphel

Registered
Last week, I bought a used 2003 800Mhz, 256MB RAM G3 iBook from BetaMacs.com, running OS X 10.4.11. It had a tendency to lock up to the degree (normally when I had certain applications open, like Firefox) that the system would not respond unless I rebooted it. Last night, those problems came to a head when I had restarted my computer after the Dashboard froze up when I was trying to install a widget. I was able to get as far as the blue Mac OS X progress bar before the system locked, stuck on a blue screen with a cursor. I was able to move the cursor, but there were no progress indicators, like the spinning wait cursor. My desktop, the Dock and its icons were not able to appear. I tried rebooting the system to see if it were just an isolated occurrence, but every instance brought up the same problem.

I went online on another computer, and went to find solutions. I tried running Safe Mode, but Safe Mode produced the same problems that normal booting did--I was still displayed a blue screen with a cursor after the startup routines.

I had wondered if it were a hard drive problem, but have tried using single-user mode to run fsck, which told me that my file system was 'OK'. I then tried booting from Single User Mode to see if the GUI would be bypassed, but after the boot sequence was completed, Aqua started itself up, and took me to the blue screen with the cursor. I also attempted to change the Netinfo settings, which allowed me to create a new account, but did not permit me to log in--rather, it gave me a blue screen with a cursor similar to the one I saw before, albeit with the OS X Tiger default wallpaper, rather than a plain blue screen. Finally, I tried booting with Verbose Mode to see if I saw anything amiss during the startup sequence, and the only thing that stood out to me were two 'I/O Errors'. Googling around indicated that these could be hard-drive problems, but fsck revealed nothing wrong with the system.

I wonder if I have corrupted the Dashboard by having an incomplete installation there, and because of its constantly running in the background, I cannot log in properly. I found the command-line code to disable the Dashboard, but I cannot use single-user mode to remove it.

The computer did not come with an OS X disc, so I cannot run any utilities from it, nor can I reinstall the operating system right now. The only thing I have not done is checking and repairing file permissions, and I am unsure how to do that under single-user mode.
 
Hmm, it sounds like you've tried everything that i know of, 256MB of ram, really isn't going to help when you trying to multi-task, you should definitely consider putting the maximum of 640mb in. I'm gonna have to say your going to have to get a tiger disc, and reboot it. I'm not familiar with Disk warrior and onyx yet, but i don't think that those programs would help anyway, because you can't get into your computer.
 
I am going to try one more thing--repairing permissions in single-user mode, although I am a little pessimistic. I will try to see if I can find a copy of the OS to do an archive and install, and upgrade the RAM (which I was already planning to do) to 512 MB at the very least.
 
Well actually 512 would be the very most, the ibook g3's support a maximum of one 512 stick.
640+ 128MB soldered in + 512MB of pc100 or pc133.
It's too bad you didn't buy an ibook with a 900MHz processor, then you would be able to run Leopard.

Can i ask how much you bought it for?
 
Aaaah, I see. Mine came with 256.

I paid $179, so it wasn't ridiculously expensive. I had seen it advertised as a deal on an older iBook on LowEndMac.com, which is generally a trustworthy site. I don't remember having seen any 900mhz iBooks for sale on that site when I looked, unfortunately.
 
Wow,Lol, i have 3 G3's, and i'm only selling each for 125-150.
and they all have 640MB of ram haha.
 
Have you tried to startup your Mac while holding the Shift key?
It could be a corrupt Spotlight-file. Same symptoms.
And yes, you should defenitely put in 512 SODIMM SDRAM.
Greetings from the Netherlands / Germany
 
Hey I am not sure exactly what to tell you, but I want to say that the SAME EXACT thing is happening to me. I bought an ibook G3 with mac os 10.4.11 on it as well for 189.99. It only had 192 mb on it so I got it up to 640 and it definately started running faster, but it continues to freeze and I have to constantly reboot it because nothing else works. I am starting to wonder about the compatibility of that version with that laptop...
 
Back
Top