Need Computer Help, G4 Acting Very Strange!

[johnjm22]

Today I was working on my G4 and it crashed. I got that message "you need to restart your computer." Not that big of a deal, this has happened before. I'll just restart my computer and everything will be fine. Or so I thought...

When I rebooted the computer it took a very long time. It went to a blank grey screen and I got that spinning beach ball for a minute or two, then it turned into the regular pointer, and nothing happened after that.

It's just sitting there with this blank grey screen and nothing is happening! The mouse is still working, so it's not totally frozen.

Does anyone know what's wrong? What should I do?

I'm really scared right now, cause everything that is important in my life is on this computer.

Yikes

Someone please help!
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Mac G4
Dual 1.25
PT 6.0
OS 10.2.8

[maccool]

First thing I'd do is boot from the Jaguar install CD, find and open Disk Utility in the Menu bar, and see if DU can Repair your boot volume. Second thing I'd do is go to MacGurus and post the problem there. That message means a Kernel Panic which could be caused by any number of things. The Gurus crowd can help you recover the drive and maybe find out what caused the KP in the first place.

[dio]

Might be that the drive is dying or is close to it. As he says, Disk Utility from the Installation cd would be your first step.
Something similar happened to me about a year ago, it took 5 minutes to start my computer and things like that. Then I used disk warrior to see what was wrong, and it was the drive that was dying. Many bad things have beeen said about Disk Warrior but in that instance it saved my ass by telling me my drive was about to die before it actually did...
Let us know what happens...

[maccool]

dio's right, the drive itself might be about to fail. Any drive can fail at any time, usually at the least opportune moment (it's an old law, or charter, or something), which is why a solid automated backup strategy is vital. Corruption of the volume's directory is more likely, although if it's bad enough then data recovery, while possible, may not be financially viable (depends on what you've lost!). If DU can't rebuild the directory and get you up and running again, then try Disk Warrior. I don't know what bad reports of DW you've read, but in my book it's the disk utility of choice for OS X. One of it's great features is that it won't actually make any changes on the drive until you tell it to do so. Other utilities get stuck in, make changes, and then find that they can't finish the job. But by this time the utility has rendered the drive unrecoverable, or only recoverable by way of a very expensive data recovery service. (We're talking $Thousands here!). In particular, have nothing to do with Norton. TechToolPro4 is good, but always use Disk Warrior first and only then, if it can't do the job (rare, and you have to be patient, it can take hours), let TTP4 have a go. If the volume in question holds only OS and App's, then the fastest solution might be to bite the bullet, initialize the drive and reinstall the software. Yeah, I know, there are authorization issues if you do that, only you can know if it's a good idea.

[johnjm22]

Well I restarted my G4 today and it booted up fine . I went ahead and backed everything up on to another drive.

So what should I do now?

Is everything alright? or should I still run disk utiliy/disk warrior?

If my disk is dying does that me I just have to reformat? Or do I need to buy a whole new disk?

[dio]

Hey there again...

Well, the disk could have damaged directories or could be actually failing physically. In the second case you need to buy a new one. Don't know what to tell you about your specific case.
Sometimes the drive is physically damaged, but once it's started things go more or less smooth because of RAM. For example, the first time you open a folder it might take a long time to get the contents, but then, as long as you don't reboot, things are fast...
Your best bet is ro find a friend with DW and run it...
Or, since you got everything backed up, go on with what you got and see what happens...