Mac laptop G4 troubles

[Slimline]

Hey guys, my girlfriend has a G4 laptop that she uses for her graphic design course at college. Today it ran into troubles, so she tried to reboot it. It now come up to the blue screen, where normally the login window comes up, and does nothing. I know nothing at all about macs, or if they even have bioses to access or what not.

How can I go about diagnosing the problem? I tried hard reboots, thats about all I know about macs lol. Should I remove and replace the battery or something?

Help asap would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Rob

 

[chcarnage]

If you have the System CD, insert it and press C on the keyboard while booting. The Mac should then boot from the CD and offer a hardware or hard disk test tool.

 

[Slimline]

damn...I wish I had the setup cd. It is a rented one from the college. They have all the software disks. She can take it to them monday and have them look at it, but they just wipe the thing and reformat. Therefor, she loses ALL the work she has worked on this semester. I am trying to find a alternative atm. Ill try booting it again now that it has been off for a while.

 

[chcarnage]

If you have a FireWire cable and a FireWire interface on your PC, you may try to boot the Mac in target mode. Connect the computers, then press T on the Mac's keyboard while booting it (well if it still boots...) The Mac should then act like an external hard disk to your PC.

But it could also be a hardware failure, especially if it's a college laptop that maybe was dropped a few times...

 

[Slimline]

Hey Thanks!! I will try that when I get back to my place tonight. I was coming on here to ask somethign jsut like that, if there is a way to ftp into it or something. Or, if there is like a mac version safe boot mode. Thanks again, Ill give it a shot.