Powerbook Blue Screen of Death

June 8, 2007 12:50 AM

Blue screen of death on a Mac PowerBook - what to do?

A friend is having problems with his PowerBook - one of the last before the switch to Intel chips and the release of the Mac Book Pro.

I think the Powerbook was dropped, and the harddrive replaced (this was not done under warranty). Installing the OS has been an issue.

The laptop is in Canada (where I am) and there's no Mac store nearby. My friend is based in Japan, and he left the Powerbook here on a recent trip.

Does anyone have any advice?

My friend says:

I tried to reinstall the system (OS 10.4). I inserted the system DVD and restarted holding down the "C" key to get the system to start from the DVD. Part way through that process (with the screen showing "Starting Mac OS"), the process stalled. I forced a shut down by unplugging and removing the battery, then restarted holding down the space bar to eject the DVD. On startup, I got a blue screen. I tried inserting the first of a set of three Mac OS 10.3 system disks, but I get only a blue screen and cannot eject the disk.

A techy friend took a look at it and reports:

I took a look at the powerbook. I couldn't get it to boot up, even with the the original apple install discs, or my own. I tried resetting the pram and the power manager, taking out the upgraded RAM, but nothing would help.

Does anyone have any ideas?

posted by KokuRyu to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Sounds like a logic board failure.
posted by phaedon at 1:25 AM on June 8, 2007

Is the hard disk new, or recycled from another machine? Try removing it, attaching it to another computer, and blitzing it with some drive wiping software.
posted by humblepigeon at 1:54 AM on June 8, 2007

Removing the hard drive will void any remaining warranty. I'd suggest sending it back to Applecare. They should turn it around quickly.
posted by SpecialK at 5:30 AM on June 8, 2007

Removing the hard drive will void any remaining warranty.

The original posting says the hard drive has been replaced because the notebook was dropped.
posted by humblepigeon at 6:06 AM on June 8, 2007

I had a similar issue. Not sure if it applies to your situation, but worth a look. There is a documented issue with these PowerBooks. In my case, one of the 2 DRAM slots has stopped recognizing the actual memory chip. I was able to switch memory chips, and the problem still exists, so I know it's not a memory chip problem. Somehow, I was finally able to get a solid boot. I formatted the HD and started from scratch, which helped also. My tech guy, and the Apple repair shop both thought it was a HD failure, but it's the chip problem.

See:

http://lowermemoryslot.editkid.com/

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303173

Good luck!
posted by davidinmanhattan at 7:11 AM on June 8, 2007

2nding davidinmanhattan. replace the RAM - funky/non-recongized RAM can do weird things to Macs. also, a machine of that vintage will not boot 10.3 disks, or even a 10.4 disk if it's sufficiently old enough (10.4 is a couple years old now). you could try booting it into Target Disk Mode (hold T down when it boots) and installing OS X on it from there, but that may or may not work (you need to have another PowerPC Mac to do it on).
posted by mrg at 9:06 AM on June 8, 2007

thanks for the suggestions - i will pass on
posted by KokuRyu at 11:29 AM on June 8, 2007

Just to clarify, my issue was not caused by the actual RAM chips. The problem is with the hardware the you insert the chips into. The lower one does not work/acknowledge the chip.
posted by davidinmanhattan at 9:03 PM on June 8, 2007

Issue resolved - Powerbook works again. Here's how:

Sez techy friend:

I looked at the memory slot problem. I removed each simm in turn, and found that it made no difference either way. My conclusion was that it wasn't a memory problem.

One thing that did happen during the process of installing, was that I tried to install a clean system from a 10.4.2 DVD from a G5 system. The powerbook would boot off that disc and make it to the install software, but the install DVD checked to see if it was a PowerMac G5 and then would tell you to install from a proper install DVD.

What this suggested to me was that the powerbook probably needed something from a system that was updated from 10.4.0 to boot properly. So I put the powerbook into target disk mode, hooked it up to my powermac, installed 10.4.0 and then updated it to 10.4.8 from a downloaded updated from apple. Then I restarted the powerbook and it booted! Problem solved.

I wouldn't update it to 10.4.9, even when software update runs and suggests that you do it. 10.4.9 is a buggy update and there are numerous reports of it doing bad things to you system. Stick with 10.4.8 and you'll be fine.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:17 AM on June 11, 2007