Apple iBook Problem

[xierox]

A friend of mine owns an iBook. It is probably between 1 to 2 years old.

His story: Recently, he was using his computer when his web browser opened up to a porn site. (He was not using his browser at this time, so the browser was opened by something on the system.) Immedietly after this, his computer shut off. Since this time, when he turns it on, one of two things will happen. Either a) his fan will come on, but nothing else comes on and his computer will not boot or b) his computer boots. If his computer boots, it will work for a little while (generally not more than a half-hour) before just turning off again. It gives no error message, the screen goes dark and the computer stops responding, but the fan keeps running until he holds the power button.

After a day or so of this, he attempted to update his computer from 10.3 to 10.4, but it shut down in the middle of checking the CD for errors.

Any ideas?

- X

[The Texan]

how bout trying to boot into safe mode and run a AV/spyware scan but im not to familiar with apple's so is that even an option?

[xierox]

Originally posted here by The Texan
how bout trying to boot into safe mode and run a AV/spyware scan but im not to familiar with apple's so is that even an option?

Well, he already runs an AV. Secondly, I have a suspicion that this is not malware related because it shuts down even when booted off of a CD.

- X

[rcgreen]

I don't know about the porn site coming up by itself.
More like he was surfing the site and when his wife/GF
suddenly arrived he went for the power switch and the
sudden shutdown corrupted some files.

Either that or it's a hardware failure. I'd bet on hardware.
There's a one in ten million possibility that someone has
remote access, but they would have to have had physical
access to install it. You can't do "drive by" installs of trojans
and malware on a Mac. Not yet anyway.

[Egaladeist]

Hi xierox,

Don't know if this will help or not...

Try running 'FSCK';

To run fsck, you first need to start up your Mac in single-user mode. Here's how:

1. Restart your Mac.

2. Immediately press and hold the Command and "S" keys.

You'll see a bunch of text begin scrolling on your screen. In a few more seconds, you'll see the Unix command line prompt (#).

You're now in single-user mode.

Now that you're at the # prompt, here's how to run fsck:

1. Type: "fsck -f" (that's fsck-space-minus-f).

2. Press Return.

The fsck utility will blast some text onto your screen. If there's damage to your disk, you'll see a message that says:

***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

If you see this message--and this is extremely important-- repeat running fsck. It is normal to have to run fsck more than once -- the first run's repairs often uncover additional problems..

When fsck finally reports that no problems were found, and the # prompt reappears:

3. Type: "reboot" to restart,

or type "exit" to start up without rebooting.

4. Press Return.

Your Mac should proceed to start up normally to the login window or the Finder.

http://experts.about.com/q/Macintosh...-t-start.htm#b
Macintosh OS: ibook won't start up

Eg

[xierox]

Thanks a ton, Eg!