Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Mac Fried

This post has nothing to do with McDonald's.

My PowerBook G4 is officially dead. For four days I've been trying to restore it but I couldn't. Apparently my hard drive got some internal error and my attempts to revive it lead to frying the whole logic board (motherboard).

It all started with Leopard's BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) although I didn't have Application Enhancer installed. Everytime I reboot after the grey Apple logo it boots up to a blue screen with nothing but a cursor (kernel panic?). I solved this problem using single-user mode with

sudo fsck_hfs -l /dev/disk0s3
/sbin/mount -uw /


Moments after I log in everything freezes and I have to reboot again, and as mentioned earlier, BSOD kicks back in.

I went for another solution, reinstalling OS X. I boot on Safe Mode, insert OS X DVD, mount the disk and restart for installation, and again it stops on BSOD with me unable to go through installtion process.

And on to my last resort, I tried to install OS X using Single-User mode and that's where everything went down hill. I followed a step-by-step solution yet I couldn't force it to install.

After that I took it to iCity workshop. One day later I get a call telling me my logic board is fried and there's no way of recovering it nor the hard drive. Luckly I was able to backup all my data using Safe Mode before taking it there so I haven't really lost anything except the Mac itself.

I have big plans for this summer so I won't be getting a new Mac until late August. Hopefully there will be newer models to choose from though so far MacBook Pro 15" is my choice.

10 comments:

Enchanted said...

9ij macaholic !!;P

Jacqui said...

There seems to be something in the air for the older generation Macs. My sister's iMac G4 is refusing to boot and emits this loud fan sound that drives me nuts so I am not sure how to fix that even.

Ms. Sarah said...

Awww, I'm sorry for your loss..

3shan chethi mi5tefee all those days hehe

Anonymous said...

Sad :(

So what's ur plan for summer now?

Anonymous said...

Angelo (another Kuwait blogger) and I had the exact same problem - we think they must have built it into the G4 motherboard to encourage us to invest in new technology (as if we NEEDED incentive! LOL) The good news for me was that the Apple guys transferred everything I needed from my G4 to the new MacPowerBook as part of the purchase.

Ms Loala said...

That's just another reason why i should not buy Mac. When they crash, they're dispensable, unlike Windows where you simply format it and everything goes back to normal :\



Welcome back to Windows :D

MacaholiQ8 said...

noonie:
Is that good or bad? :P


jacqui:
There's one logical explanation for all this. I think it's intentional by Apple and the reason behind that is the Graphics update they had a while back.


swair:
Yeah. :(


bashar:
The trip won't be postponed, however, looks like the Bravia has to wait one more year. :/


intlxpatr:
My thought exactly! I think Apple are killing their older models.
Same here, I managed to transfer everything to an external hard drive, nothing is lost. ;)



ms loala:
Uh-hah! You're wrong. For almost 4 years I haven't had to format my Mac, not even once! Besides, this one got fried internally, if it wasn't it would still be recoverable.

How many times do you have to format your WineDoze each year? :P

I might format this computer and put Linux instead just to avoid windows and your shimata! :P

Enchanted said...

No its good ! i love Mac..;P

Anonymous said...

3atham allah ajrik

MacaholiQ8 said...

noonie:
Good. :D


jaz:
Ajerna wajrik.
Got forced induction? :P