h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I put my powerbook to sleep by closing the lid (duh me), only it didn't go to sleep. When I came back later the fans were going and when I opened the lid I had a blank screen and nothing else. I turned it off, then on. It chimed but nothing else happened (no sounds, black screen).

Then I disconnected the power, took the battery out, put the battery in, reconnected the power. Then pressed shift/ctrl/opt/command together, let go, waited, then pushed the power button. This made it chime, the fans came on, and some of the start up sounds, then nothing. There is only a very faint sound (heard close up) and a black screen.

Any troubleshooting ideas?

Applecare have said there is nothing to do other than take the HDD out and use an adaptor to recover all my data. But I would like to get the old PB going again if possible. The only reason applecare were talking to me was so I could retrieve data ie they're not interested in the very old powerbook. But is there any sw trouble shooting I can do?

I have a new macbookpro (we tried booting up the powerbook in target disc mode, unsuccessfully).

tia,
kea.

Sounds a bite dire kea! It could be the hard drive or something more serious although you would not get the start-up sound if there was a motherboard problem. Have you got a CD/DVD drive and a OSX install disk for it? If you have try and start up from this.

Have you tried to reset the PRAM. It takes two unless you are a pianist. Hold down Option, Command, P and R whilst you press the power button. Hold the first 4 keys until you hear the start-up sound for a second time then let go.

There is a more radical solution. Use the new MacBook Pro to find a Linux distro that will work with the PowerBook from a memory stick and try and boot from that. This would be a way of proving that the motherboard is not the problem. (Ubuntu 10.04 should work.)

Good luck.

t.

Thanks turvy!

Have just tried the PRAM reset, no luck.

I do have the install discs, but I think the superdrive is not working (wouldn't accept even a video dvd last time I tried). I don't want to lose the disc into the drive . Can I put that onto something else eg a stick, or an external HDD?

Someone is looking after me I left the PB unplugged without the battery overnight in the hope that it just needed to cool down and rest, and this morning I got it to boot up in target disc mode! So I've firewired all the absolutely essential stuff and am now copying across the home folder.

Whew. That's a lesson well learned (I hope). I woke up this morning thinking for the first time about all the data I might have lost (haven't done a proper back up in over a year ).

Excellent news

I was always bad at backing up data until I did a Masters course and thought I had lost an essay with the deadline approaching. Luckily I had a copy on the work computer which was only one edit older so all was not lost.

I now use Time Machine once a month to back everything up and keep 2 or 3 copies of important stuff.

t.

I need to go read up about time machine. I don't have an external drive plugged in normally so not sure how that will work.

Yes you need a separate drive for 'Time machine', either internally or externally, otherwise your hard drive will quickly become full.

I don't bother with it, but do manual ones now and then, onto disc..but a plug external drive would be as good providing it never breaks.

I don't have such vast amounts of data though that really matter to me. I can easily fit stuff onto a DVD.

Time Machine is good for what it does but as Effers says it's not worth bothering with when automated back ups are switched on. It soon fills up which ever drive you use for it and takes up processor time. I only back up with it manually about once a month.

t.