Is my Apple iBook dead?

Don’t take this the wrong way, but it may be time for a new laptop.

First of all, do you have it plugged into power? It is very likely that an iBook that old will have a failing battery. So try turning it on when it’s plugged in.

Second, try resetting the PMU.

When you try and turn the iBook on, do you hear any noise at all? Or is it completely silent? If you do hear any noise, do you have an external monitor you can plug the iBook into to check if it’s starting up?

Let me know if this helps.

@crisw Hi, thanks! Yes I do have it plugged all the time while in use since the batt runs out in a few minutes at this point. It seems I don’t hear that usual chime anymore! Now that you mentioned it. But I will plug into a speaker and confirm this soon as I get back home after my work shifts. Plus, I’ll check that link out as well. : )

@crisw My computer started up but keeps stalling after one minute of use. It freezes and I am unable to even force quit anything. Help?

Try this- restart it and hold down the apple (command) and S keys until you see a screen of white text on a black background. When you get a text prompt, type:

/sbin/fsck -fy

and press Return. Some tests will run, and you may see some messages. If fsck finds anything and has altered, repaired, or fixed anything, it will display this message:

***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

If this message appears, repeat the /sbin/fsck -fy command above until fsck tells you that your volume appears to be OK.

if you get any messages other than this, what are they?

When fsck reports that your volume is OK or reports problems it cannot fix, type “reboot” at the prompt and then press Return.

Also, try starting up in safe mode and seeing if you have the same issue.

Typed /sbin/fsck -fy

So far it says Checking HFS Plus Volume
checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
checking catalog hierarchy

Oh wait, it says volume disk babex is ok so I rebooted…

Ok can’t get to the Internet so I tried opening a Final Draft file to open and it froze. I can’t move the cursor at all.

Also tried the safe mode start up. The apple logo comes out but not the progress indicator spinning gear…

Ok just tried it again and the spinning gear comes out so I released the shift button…

The spinning gear spun for about 5 minutes then froze…waiting now…

@crisw Thanks for the help. I have to shut it down now, can’t wait for spinning gear to unfroze since it’s past 1 am here and need to get some sleep. Will try this safe mode again asap… : )

Do you think I should bring this over to an apple store and have it checked even if it’s way over warranty. I think apple stores charges for repairs and probably diagnostic services too?

Before doing much else, if you have important data on it that isn’t backed up, I’d find someone with another Mac, get a FireWire cable, target boot your Mac and see if you can salvage your data and move it to the other computer.

This particular model of Mac was notorious for logic board issues, which are not worth repairing, although the first sign of those was usually video issues. If you choose to look into repairing it, getting a third party to look at it will be much cheaper than having Apple do it.

Ok thanks a lot @crisw, will do. : )