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things that suck
* discovering that your laptop has suddenly decided to be a very expensive paperweight
(Almost positive that it just needs an OS reinstall, but nobody in the house has any OSX 10.4 install disks with them. Grarrrgh.)
(Almost positive that it just needs an OS reinstall, but nobody in the house has any OSX 10.4 install disks with them. Grarrrgh.)
An OS install may not be necessary:
* If it never gets past the grey screen and/or you get a boot symbol with a line through it, the startup disk can't be found. This could be hardware or software failure and is best resolved by starting up in Target Disk mode (connect another computer to dead computer with a firewire and press and hold "T" at startup chime) like someone else pointed out, or start up from a OSX 10.4 install and run Disk Utility a couple of times.
* If you get past the grey startup screen and get hung up at a blue screen OR you get past the login sequence but your desktop doesn't load, you probably have some corrupt preferences or something else that is hanging up the login process. Try rebooting and doing a Safe Boot: hold down the SHIFT key until you get a Login Window (THIS MAY TAKE FOREVER because your disk is being checked for errors in the process. Once you're logged in, empty the Trash. Next, weed out any third party apps or things that could be triggering the error.
I use a free utility called Applejack that is really awesome in fixing inexplicable OS X errors. Also if you can get your hands on a copy of Disk Warrior, this can repair damage to the Volume structure and other disk errors.
/tl;dr tech support :D: Good luck.
Re: An OS install may not be necessary:
Re: An OS install may not be necessary: