# Ibook G4: Ubuntu won't boot, and now Mac won't work.



## MooseHaven (Nov 30, 2011)

Hello, I'm not that computer savvy so hopefully this makes sense: 

I installed Ubuntu on my Ibook G4. I downloaded it onto a disk but I couldn't get it to work so I installed it fully onto the hard drive (uhg) so it worked for a minute but the internet wouldn't work. I restarted it and then it wouldn't boot at all. It would just stay on the black screen (the one that says boot from cd or linux) but if you pressed anything it would just go to the Ubuntu title screen and then shut down. 

That was a few weeks ago, and it still doesn't work. I tried holding down option + cmmd + O & F and booting from the firmware screen but it still doesn't work. I've tried holding down alt and the blue screen pops up with the hard drive symbol and then it has a penguin sitting in front of it which I guess is the Linux symbol. When I press the arrow, it just takes me back to the black boot screen. Occasionally some error messages will pop up on the black screen they say various things like disk space too small but then it flashes really quick and restarts. 

I bought the computer from someone else so I don't have the mac os restore cd. I had a windows xp one so I tried that and ubuntu actually worked for a minute but I couldn't install the cd so I pressed eject and the disk came out. I tried putting in a different disk and now I can't get the disk out. I've held down F12 and also typed in Eject on the open firmware screen but nothing works. This happened before, but I was able to get the disk to come out by repeatively pressing F12. But this cd has been stuck for a few weeks. 

So basically, I can't use the computer at all now ever since I installed Ubuntu 10.04. I just want to get rid of Ubuntu and get my Mac os x back. 

We're out of town and in a small town that doesn't have a computer repair store near by (well there's one but they had a whole assembly line of computers to work on and they said they'll need to keep it for five-seven days before I even finished telling them what was wrong with it) I'm not sure what to do now, so any advice would be helpful. Sorry about the novel lol. 

Thanks for your time
-Jessi


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Novels are good, as it gives needed details. You can't boot into OS X because it seems that Ubuntu either wiped it out, or rewrote the boot info so that the Mac doesn't know that OS X is there, if it is still there. Windows will not boot on a iBook, so that'll be useless to try. As for ejecting the CD, hold down the trackpad button when you turn it on, and keep it help until the CD spits out. If that doesn't work, then there is something wrong with the drive. To get OS X back, you'll need to take it to an Apple store and see if they will reinstall it for you, or you need to search ebay to find a retail copy of the version of OS X you had.


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## MooseHaven (Nov 30, 2011)

Thank you so much! lol I had no idea about the trackpad trick. I just tried it and the cd finally came out ah  
I'm going to look up retail copies of the OS X cd now. Thanks again for your help.


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