From: Greg Merritt (gmerritt@uclink.berkeley.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 16 2002 - 08:52:52 PST
I had a dual usb ibook do nearly the same thing.
Actually, it had problems with its power board; it was sent
back to Apple under warranty, where they (somewhat mysteriously)
replaced the power board, the motherboard, *and* the hard drive.
As I was re-installing software and documents, it developed
the sort of noisy click you describe. I would proceed through the
boot sequence, but would take many minutes. I took it back to
hardware support, who sent it back to Apple again for another HD
replacement. It's been fine ever since.
I'd suggest backing up the user's data ASAP and sending it to
hardware support. You might try asking for Mike, who helped me with
my iBook; if this is a recurring problem, I bet he'd like to know
about it.
Good luck,
-Greg
cc: Mike Carver
At 2:13 PM -0800 12/13/02, John Ward wrote:
>Hi Magnetters,
>
>I'm trying to troubleshoot a Powerbook G4 issue and I would love get
>input from the Magnet list.
>
>The machine is running OS 10.2.2.
>
>Here's the sequence of events:
>
>1. A user brought her month old powerbook to me because it "suddenly
>became really slow."
>
>2. When I booted the machine, I heard an audible clicking sound
>which appeared to be coming from the hard drive. It sounded as
>though the machine was trying very hard read the hard disk and that
>it was not entirely succeeding. I assumed that the problem might
>be a failing hard drive. The machine produced no errors indicating a
>hardware failure.
>
>3. To my surprise, the machine eventually completed the boot
>process, though this took about 45 minutes.
>
>4. Upon booting, the powerbook "appeared" work, though it did
>everything very slowly, especially tasks that required hard disk
>access. Running applications resulted in long waits and lots of the
>"spinning beachball".
>
>5. Then, something perplexing happened. Upon subsequent reboots,
>the machine booted more quietly and also more quickly. Eventually,
>the clicking went away and it only took 20 minutes to boot instead
>of 45 minutes. Though this clearly an improvement, applications
>still run too slowly for this machine to be usable.
>
>6. I booted once while holding down the cmd and v keys to view the
>console messages during startup. I also viewed the system's
>/var/log/system.log file. There were no messages indicating a
>problem.
>
>Is anyone familiar with this problem? Any thoughts or advice would
>be greatly appreciated.
>
>Thanks.
>
>John Ward
>Computer Resources/Support
>Institute of Human Development
>1127 Tolman Hall #1690
>University of California, Berkeley
>Phone: (510) 643-1230
>
>
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