LAPTOP NIGHTMARE! =G4

[Nu-tra]

Well i have a G4 power book that decided it didn't want to work anymore. I backed up everything and decided to reinstall everything. I erased the hard drive ran it through disk warrior and it passed all the tests. I can't find my original powerbook install software so I used my panther install. It installed successfully but now I see the apple logo when it starts up but then the screen goes black and I hear sound of the apple talk through set up page. No picture

The only thing I can think of is that the powerbook install cd has vital info the panther install doesn't

Thanks in advance

[dkatz42]

How old (new) is your laptop compared to the Panther release disk? If it is newer, the most likely problem is that the older release disk does not support the new hardware (a little difficult for them to predict the future.)

There are a few options here:

Call Apple support and order another hw-specific install disk
Order a generic Tiger install (unlikely you can get a generic Panther install now)


There are some fun tricks that you can do if you have more than one Mac. I recently bought a Mini, and the first thing I always do is reinstall the o/s with most of the crap removed (gets the install size down from 15GB to about 3.5GB). Unfortunately, the install DVD was defective and unreadable. I tried my MBP install disk for yucks, but of course it wouldn't install because the hardware type didn't match.

So I went to emergency plan C. I put the Mini in FW Target Mode, hooked it up to my MBP, stuck the MBP install disk into the MBP, and told it to install to the Mini as an external drive. It passed the hardware-type test (since it was being installed on the "right" machine) and the Mini ran just fine afterward. Of course, the Mini ended up with some software it couldn't use (Photo Booth) and this procedure isn't without its risks (how new is the release disk relative to the machine?) but it has saved my bacon in a pinch.

You may want to just bite the bullet and install Tiger; it seems to be working fine for most folks.

[Nu-tra]

It's a g4 1.33 ghz I gig of ram I think my panther disk is about a year and a half old I've used it to update my laptop in the past.

Thanks

[sleepwalker]

I had a similar problem. Look up the key command to do a pram reset, or somehting like that. I'd get the apple screen or a blue screen, but nothing else. Doing this fixed it completely.

Originally Posted by Nu-tra

It's a g4 1.33 ghz I gig of ram I think my panther disk is about a year and a half old I've used it to update my laptop in the past.

Thanks

[Nu-tra]

Thanks I'm trying it now!

[dkatz42]

Originally Posted by Nu-tra

It's a g4 1.33 ghz I gig of ram I think my panther disk is about a year and a half old I've used it to update my laptop in the past.

Thanks

Ah, in that case ignore everything I said. (Except how cool FW Target mode is; I use it all the time for all kinds of nefarious things.)