By Graham K. Rogers

One of my colleagues at work has a G4 iBook: the white polycarbonate thing. I installed OS X for her last year and a few days ago she told me it had all gone dead and would not start. She was all ready to send it to the scrap heap but I have an aversion to that: if a computer is running, it can be used for some tasks, even if the OS version is out of date. I did suspect, however that the hard disk might be on its way out, but asked if she would let me have a look.

She handed over the computer on Monday just after lunch and I tried it out. The start-up sound was there, but neither the Apple logo nor the spinning gear-wheel appeared. I tried a restart into single user mode (Command + S), but that would not work, so I began to make plans about running it in Target mode and other ways to start it up. I was not able to do this at the office as I was travelling light -- iPad only -- and some of the cables I needed were at home.

Nonetheless, I do have a drawer full of disks I have acquired (legally) over the years and among the operating system versions and rescue software, there ought to have been something I could use. It also dawned on me that I was going to have to work a bit faster than I was used to as I did not have the power supply. The one in my office (and the one at home) has the later MagSafe connector and was therefore not suitable for the older G4 iBook.

I decided to start with an earlier version of OS X. I have all the versions in my office, from 10.2 up to 10.6 (there is an installer for 10.1 there somewhere too that came with a G4 PowerPC), so gave 10.5 a run. The computer started, the Apple logo appeared, followed by the gear-wheel and we soon had the language choice panel. This all suggested that the problem was software related, but when I ran Disk Utility from the 10.5 installer, it was unable to complete the process. The pendulum swung back towards a failing disk.

I restarted and tried to eject the disk. As before, there was no Apple logo, but holding down the trackpad did not eject the disk. On all other Macs I have used, pressing the mouse button or the trackpad at startup will eject a disk. I scratched my head for a while, and pressed the eject button a couple of times, but nothing happened. I tried a second restart, but this time pressed the eject button and the disk came out.

If one disk could come out, then it might be an idea to try another. I inserted the Disk Warrior one that I keep safe in the room. Another restart and I watched as the Apple logo came up again. All well and good.

I know that the Disk Warrior startup is always slow, but this was geological; and then the screen changed. Lots of Unix style text and "We are hanging here" was shown on the screen. I haven't seen that for ages. We had had a good, old-fashioned kernel panic. Good and bad really: there was something in the system that was readable, but we did have problems.

I did one more restart to eject the disk. This time, the Apple logo appeared, but not the spinning gear-wheel.

I tried Single User mode again and this time, I was able to access the system and effect a repair using the command fsck -fy. As the process ran, I was not surprised to see that there were problems, nor the problems that were indicated: the hierarchical structure. It had lost the plot. Unlike the earliest versions of OS X, the file system check makes the repair and then runs again, reporting at the end that the disk "appears to be OK" -- praise indeed.

With the repair done, I restarted as normal and the process was as it should be, right up to the login screen. I did not have the password, so carried it down to my colleague's office as it was and put it on her desk.

After she had blinked once or twice, I made a strong suggestion that any data needed should be rescued as I was not willing to give any guarantees about the disk itself, even though SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) reports all is well.

There is no moral here: stuff happens, although users can minimise damage by running maintenance routines regularly, not shutting down using the power button and backing up data. I have a sense, however, that this is not the last time I will see this iBook.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.