Mac User’s; I NEED YOUR HELP!
Last night myself and AlanSla attempted to bring some life back to my slowly dying 15″ PowerBook G4. I bought it over four years ago, when I was starting college and it has served me well over the last few years despite a few knocks and spills.
I think my three-year commute to college was the first thing to take it’s toll; during third year and throughout my thesis I was using the PowerBook so much that the charger quite literally melted on itself. I replaced it with a Macally charger (I couldn’t wait) which broke a year later only to be replaced by the current Macally charger (which appears to be nearly dead already too). Due to my nasty habit of always plugging in my PowerBook; the battery became very unreliable and wouldn’t last long.
Despite the power issue, I’ve had no other major problems until about a year ago; when the PowerBook started going to sleep at random while in use. The first few times it would be easy to wake it up again by simply pressing Enter, but over time it began to go to sleep more often and it became harder and harder to wake it up. The worst case left the Powerbook asleep for nearly a week until it eventually shut down with no power. I charged it, turned it on and then it seemed fine for a couple of months until it started happening again.
When I bought my iMac; the intention was to clear everything off the PowerBook and reinstall OS X, which I was hoping would sort out this problem. I was transferring and doing backups of anything on the PowerBook I needed when I knocked it off the corner of the desk. The above image shows the nasty dent caused by the fall; but apart from just visible damage, my problems got a lot worse. Ever since the drop, the disc drive on the PowerBook doesn’t work; if I insert a disc it makes some horrible scratching noises and won’t read anything. It can also be very difficult to get it to eject a disc. And it fails to attach to our wi-fi network in the house (I’m told this may not be related).
Without being able to insert discs, I wasn’t sure how to reinstall OS X, until last night when we used the iMac connected to the PowerBook. We set the iMac in Target Disk Mode and used it to install OS X on the PowerBook. The first disc was fine, it took over an hour but it seemed to be working. We moved on to the second install disc and then the PowerBook went to sleep again, it happened a couple of times but would wake up and there seemed to be no problem with the install. Half way through the second install disc it went asleep and would not wake up.
It had to be something to do with the Power (didn’t it?)! After much deliberation as to what to do; we removed the battery. Nothing happened. So we pulled the power and of course it died. We then plugged it in again and turned it on without the battery, it seemed to be working fine and prompted to install the second disc so we did. It took about 45 minutes and then everything appeared to be fine, the PowerBook started from scratch and even managed to find the network. So I did a series of updates for the next few hours and still everything appeared to be okay. And then with no warning; the PowerBook died and can not be restarted.
I’m not much of a techie when it comes to computers (which is probably very obvious from this post) and at this stage I’m well and truly in over my head so if there’s any Mac users out there (or indeed anybody) who has any idea what the problem is here or have had similar problems then please let me know.
At this stage I’m not sure whether this is the end of my PowerBook or not!? Is it a power problem? Should I buy a new battery and yet another charger or is this just a waste of money? Would it be more expensive to repair the dent in the PowerBook (and the drive) than it would be to buy a new one?
Any advice or help would be very much appreciated!
Hey.
It could many problems, honestly id have to look at it properly.
It sounds like it could be a slight motherboard issue if the machine is insistent on going back to sleep.
Something you could try is putting your laptop into target disk mode and see if you can boot your imac up from it. “Might” not work as your imac is probably an intel but its worth a try.
I dont like the sound of the disk drive, especially as it started after it hit the ground
If you like, im pretty much on dean street all the time, up in the spires, if you want to give it to me for a few days. I have a few hardware test programs in the office that might shed some light.
Cheers for the feedback Ray;
“Something you could try is putting your laptop into target disk mode and see if you can boot your imac up from it.”
Unfortunately it won’t turn on anymore so I can’t try target disk mode.
Somebody else got on to me about it through FaceBook so between yourself and himself hopefully it can be sorted out. I’ll give you a shout next week if that’s cool!?
Thanks again dude.
yeah no bother. If it wont turn on, then i fear it could be a logic board problem which isn’t cheap to fix. Ivan could be right about the over heating issue, but i haven’t ever really come across it. If it was a large issue, your laptop would have being recalled by Apple.
Is it that it wont power on at all? If it turns on, but the screen wont come on then it could be a loose cable, however i would say it is still more likely to be a logic board problem. The logic board is the main thing to go in a mac laptop a few years old.
I have a enclosure in the office to put the hard drive into if you need to recover any files… just in case the machine is dead!
It won’t power on at all, it’s not just the screen.
There’s no files on it, I had cleared everything before we did the reinstall so at least I haven’t lost any work or anything.
I’d love to get it operational again though, even for writing and internet use. It’s sad to have such an expensive paper weight! =P
It really is! If you want to leave it with me i can have it sent to engineers i know in Apple and they will let me know how much it will cost to get it fixed.
If it is a logic board problem it could cost in around 400/500 euro. A lot of money, but as you said, it would be handy to have.