Powerbook Problems

[CalebSimpson]

I am having a couple problems with my Powerbook, starting last night..

1) maybe not a big deal but could be a sign of a bigger problem. When I boot up the apple shows up for a second then turns to a scribbly black and white box

2) finder is COMPLETELY locking up when I try to eject mounted disks. I can't even restart finder, it just sits there with the spinning beach ball of death. I Try to reboot and that won't work either. I have to manually shut down.

THankfully I have Apple Care, but thought I would ask here before I go through the hassel of tech support crap.

[srwatters]

Are you shutting your book down or letting it sleep? I find that OS X doesn't need to be rebooted very often and I usually just close the lid and let mine sleep (1.67GHz G4, 15"). I don't see the issue that you are having even when I do reboot. Does it go away and boot normally then?

What kind of disk are you ejecting? FW, USB, CD/DVD, flash? If you're using a FireWire or USB drive, make sure your cables are in good order. I had a similar issue with a FW-800 external drive and it was the cable. I think I posted something here about that. You might do a search for firewire and see what you get.

My PB has been awesome for a little over a year. After Christmas I'll be upgrading both the notebook and desktop to Intel machines. I hunger for more power

[CalebSimpson]

It has locked up ejecting CD's and an external USB hard drive and it has done it once with my iPod. The cables on the USB drive are fine. The whole distored apple at satrutup has me worried im having major issues that I don't know about yet. I sure hope not. It happens every time I boot now.

[SaSha]

Hey Caleb...sounds like you Mac is not working like it should. I always start trying to eliminate all the things that could be causing the issues to begin with.

Before starting up...eject and/or unplug your disk/dvd's and drives. Including your Ipod and any other accessories you might have connected via USB or Firewire.

Reset your P-RAM (hold down OPTION - APPLE and P & R keys) right after you hit the power button and make sure you key them down before you screen shows the light grey. You will know it is successful if you screen "Resets" again and/or you should here the mac start sound again. then you can let go of your keys.

See what happens after doing these few steps...if it starts up like it should run disk utility in accessories and scan you drive just to be safe.

Hopefully we can narrow down what could be causing you and your powerbook headaches.

[d2creative]

Take it in to Apple. The start up problem sounds like it could be hardware. Hard drive, ram or motherboard.

[CalebSimpson]

SaSha what is P-RAM? Whatever it is, it worked...at least it solved the screwey looking apple at boot up. Still having some external hard drive issues. It keeps locking up finder. It is working better than it did after I ran DiskWarrior though. Makes culling through images for contests a pain.

[SaSha]

Glad that was fixed so easily...here is what apple explains PRAM as, well one of the many explanations that can be found:

"PRAM stores certain system and device settings in a location that Mac OS X can access quickly. Exactly which settings are stored in the computer's PRAM varies depending on the type of computer as well as the types of devices and drives connected to the computer. Parameter RAM is a small area of non-volatile RAM (NVRAM)."

It helps to reset sometimes.

But as far as your finder locking up, there are several reason why it could be locking up. For Instance...programs running can be very dependent on mounted drives...so when you eject a drive...check to see if any programs are open. If they are programs like Nikon view or have built in browsers...they could very well get lost when the drive ejects.

Another instance is USB drives can act strange...same with firewire drives, but USB even more. If you are still having problems we will need a little more info:

If you are running OSX, what version...
What type or types of drives are making your finder lock up.
What programs are running when you eject when the finder does crash.
How are you ejecting the drive?( I know this sounds silly but some know just unplugging the drive from the back works too but probably not the best way for some drives.)

That would be it...for the meantime have you tried force quitting finder and letting it finder restart? Apple-option-Esc keys all together will bring up the force quit window. You can select finder there and force quit.

[CalebSimpson]

It happens with my Western Digital MyBook drive. It happens when transfering files to the drive from the hard drive and from cd's. IT also locks up sometimes when browsing in Photo Mechanic or just takes a really long time to sort photos. It will almost definitely lock up if files are transfering and I start to brows other directories on that drive. It was locking up EVERY time I tried to sort photos in PM until I ran DiskWarrior. Seemed to help some, just not a lot.

[SaSha]

Caleb,
There could be a number of things that cause your stated problem.

I would Verify Disk Permissions in Disk Utility and see if it finds anything wrong with your hard drive...If you need to repair your disk permissions...a word of warning...it will take a long time. Turn off sleep mode and screen savers before running the repair.

It would be hard to find the source of the problem...but narrowing it down is easy enough.
This sort of problem can stem from the:
1.internal hard drive loosing its wits(reformatting would solve that, but a a pain),
2. Internal hard drive going bad,
3. Memory gone bad(less likely but happens from time to time),
4. Internal buss gone bad(not likely but possible),
5. The system software used to mount drives and keep track of them gone bad(reformat and reinstall would fix but a pain!)

So check your permissions before anything else. Let it run on you down time...

Regards,
Sasha