Apple screen problem.

the_devil_made_me_do_it

My OH has an Apple G4 ibook. It was working fine, however, all of a sudden the cursor stopped working. He switched the machine off & switched it back on again, although the fan and hard drive fired up, the screen remained black.

He tried starting it up a few times. The screen did work & the cursor worked for a short while & stopped again.

He switched it off & on again, but although the fan & and hard drive fired up, the screen still remained black.

Does anyone any idea what could be the problem?

isofa

Does it boot to the OS? I.e. to the point it's started up and you can use the system. Is the cursor getting "stuck" in normal procedures?

If it is booting and you can start to use it, it's a software fault, which could be a multitude of issues, depending on the OS version, repairing the permissions would be a good start.

If it's not booting, boot with the CD which came with it (put it in and hold down C when you reboot until it starts from the CD), then you can reinstall from there or repair.

the_devil_made_me_do_it

Sometimes the apple logo appears, then the screen goes through an array of colors, other times, the screen remains black. It has only booted to the OS once.

the_devil_made_me_do_it

Ok. Connected laptop to a PC monitor & switched on laptop. Used the OS disk, yet the screen remained black & the monitor kept switching into "sleep" mode. Ocassionally, the start up screen would appear, but the cursor was froze & none of the files were showing up on the desktop.

If it is broken, how can I get my files off the harddisk and onto an external harddrive?

prowla

I don't recall what it is, but there is a boot-time key combination to make your Mac appear as a Firewire drive (to another Firewire enabled mac that is attached, of course!).

Marty_J

It's called "Target Disk Mode", and can be activated by holding T at startup.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

the_devil_made_me_do_it

Marty_J wrote: »

It's called "Target Disk Mode", and can be activated by holding T at startup.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

will this work even if the screen remains black?

Marty_J

the_devil_made_me_do_it wrote: »

will this work even if the screen remains black?

It very much depends what is wrong with your Mac.

the_devil_made_me_do_it

Don't know whats wrong with it. The problem just happened. It had been working fine.

prowla

Marty_J wrote: »

It's called "Target Disk Mode", and can be activated by holding T at startup.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

Yarp - that'll be it.

the_devil_made_me_do_it

Could a trojan horse or virus cause the problems?