I got an unused copy of Tiger version 10.4.11, just today. I finished installing it and everything went fine I think. Except when it asked to restart to finish installing updates it didn’t restart. Instead the Mac just sits there, the desktop disappears and that’s it.
It is an iBook G4, 933 MHz PowerPC with 640MB RAM. Any suggestions will be welcome.
Hold down the power button ten seconds or so to turn it off. Hit the power button to start it up and then immediately hold down the Apple and the S key. It will come up as text and scroll through a bunch of stuff. Once it stops, type:
fsck -f
and then when it is done do it one more time for good measure. Then when that is done, type:
reboot
Hopefully that will do the trick.
Which is the Apple key? I’m sure that’s a stupid question, but I don’t know which one it is.
It’s the one with an apple on it, and also a little square with curlicues on each corner. On my MacBook, there’s one at either end of the space bar.
This is what the curlicue/square looks like: ⌘ (don’t know if all browsers will display it).
Pardon my butting in, but, on a more-or-less related note; if you are using a generic, or even a PC keyboard, is there a key that perform the same function as the ‘apple’ key?
I ask because I currently have an old Dell USB keyboard plugged into an IMac G3. It works fine, but obviously I don’t have an ‘Apple’ key. Haven’t needed it to date, but you never know.
Thanks, I see it now.:smack::o
Thanks for your help. I did everything you said, but it had no effect. I should have listened to the IT guy at work when he said not to waste my money on a Mac. I am just glad I didn’t buy a new one. This piece of shit is going straight into the bin.
The Windows key will become the command (Apple) key and the Alt button will be the Option button.
This is a little drastic, I think. The iBook will be a good surfing and email machine. Would you toss out a Windows laptop in response to the same sort of problem?
OK, before you do anything rash, what is the status?
If you can boot into single-user mode (cmd-s), did your run fsck?
When you rebooted, what happened?
Try booting with the shift key held down.
It’s late here, so I won’t be able to answer any questions until tomorrow.
Please expand. The more information you give us, the better we can help you.
I did what nursecarmen suggested. It didn’t change anything unfortunately. What happens is when I select from finder for the machine to shut down or restart all the onscreen icons disappear as if it’s going to shut down, but the desktop background stays then nothing else happens at all it does nothing. I gave it 20 minutes last night to do restart but it didn’t. I have to shut it down by holding down the power button.
Heh. I’ll take it off your hands. If all else fails, I’m sure your computer will be fine with a system reinstall. I’ve had multiple Windows boxes suddenly do weird shit to me that only a system reinstall would fix (or at least hours of dicking around and googling a solution got me nowhere.) It happens, Mac or PC, but I understand your frustration.
Ok I downloaded and ran the Applejack program I think it worked. I restarted and then tried to shut down it went to the shut down screen and a window came up suggesting there was disk space that could be recovered for my home folder I chose to run this option. It’s been running for about 3 and a half hours does anyone know how long this should take?
I don’t know. One more thing to do. Go to Disk Utility > Repair Disk Permissions on your drive. I’m not sure if fsck already did that for you, but it’s always worth a shot. Also check “verify disk” and post any error messages you may have here. Once again, I think fsck should have taken care of all that, but I’m not sure whether it runs the same basic utility or not.
I don’t know anything about AppleJack, unfortunately.
I’ve already tried to reinstall but I can’t, because to reinstall I have to restart the thing and it won’t restart, it just sits there. If it wasn’t for the fact that taking it apart is so time consuming and complex, I’d just replace the HD and have done with it. I only got the fucking thing because I kept hearing how easy and simple Macs were to use. Next person that says this to my face gets a punch to the throat. In the future, I’m sticking with PC.:mad:
Have you tried to boot from the CD? (Hold C when you turn the computer on, with the disk in the computer.)
You know, it’s possible that you have a defective hard drive.
This is really getting to be a pretty old machine - I don’t think it’s fair that you are bitching about problems on a machine that you bought used, in unknown condition, and was discontinued at least 3 years ago.
I would recommend that you meet up with a local Macintosh User group, and have someone who has done this sort of thing before take a look at the machine. Where are you located? I can find a User group near you if you tell me your location.