PowerBook booting into BSD instead of OS X (Aqua)

[lukeb3000]

Hi I have a problem with my PowerBook

It boots to BSD (Command Line Interface) instead of OS X (GUI Aqua)

This Video shows more

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_m2oKfxF3fI

Please note that the screen on the PowerBook is broke so I can only use it connected to an external monitor

 

When I try to reinstall the system, the picture does not get pushed across to the external monitor meaning I can not see what I am doing and thus can not reinstall

Thanks in advance for any help or sugestions

 

[superpantoufle]

Hi Luke,

Man, this is a strange one. I had never heard of such a thing. Now, I just looked and it seems there's quite some threads about similar issues on the Apple Support forum (try a search with "bsd login" for example).

One guy seems to have a working solution. The culprit would be a corrupted NetInfo database, and you should find a way to repair it.

In your case, the situation is made a lot worse due to your broken internal monitor…

Basically, you'll have to choose between trying to fix the issue, or trying to avoid it by reinstalling your whole system (I saw on your youtube comments that some guy already told you that, but you just can't reboot on the cd and see what's happening…). Your choice will depend on the data you have on the PowerBook; how important is it? I would advise, if you can, first backing up your stuff to another Mac by booting the PowerBook in Target mode, and then try and reinstall from scratch.

And by the way, what model of PowerBook is it? And what version of Mac OS X? Not that it should change a lot, but you'll never know…

Frankly, your system seems so messed up, that I wouldn't bother to fix it, and just reinstall it.

First you'll want to boot on the CD and still see what's going on on screen. Reset the PRAM and NVRAM, it will eventually make your computer forget about its internal monitor at startup time and immediately sync to the external one. To do this, hold Command - Option (alt) - P - R at startup. Hold until you've heard several "boiing". Official docs about resetting the PRAM: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379?viewlocale=en_US.

Now try again to boot from the CD (hold the C key at startup). There's no way booting from a CD would disable the external video signal… so if you still can't see anything on the external monitor, there's more likely another hardware issue going on…

hth!

 

[lukeb3000]

Hi thanks for the advice

It is a 12" PowerBook running Panther

I have already resert PRAM NVRAM. It did not seem to do anything?

How do I boot in to Target Mode and what is Target Mode?

I really appreciate the help

Thank You so much!!!

 

[superpantoufle]

I have already resert PRAM NVRAM. It did not seem to do anything?

Something else is going wrong here. Maybe a faulty video card? Seems strange though, since your external monitor displays an image when the computer boots on the internal drive.

Do you have another working Mac sitting around? I would advice trying to boot from an external drive, just to make sure your PowerBook is indeed working well… Sorry, I can't think of a better idea right now.

How do I boot in to Target Mode and what is Target Mode?

Target mode turns your Mac into an external hard drive, that can be mounted on another Mac's Finder just like any regular external FireWire drive or CD-Rom would. Press and hold the T key on startup. If your screen worked, you would see a purple background with the orange FireWire logo. That's it! Just plug a FireWire cable between the target Mac and another Mac, and the target Mac's disk will mount on the other Mac's Finder. Now you can transfer files between the Macs at FireWire's lightning speed… Very useful.

If you manage to mount your PowerBook's hard drive on another Mac this way, you'll be able to erase the drive and install a completely fresh copy of Mac OS X from there.