[hell99x]

This problem just started last night after a freeze.
When I start up my iBook, it won't get past the spinning gear stage -- and then it automatically restarts in an endless cycle. I did a repair on the hard drive from disk utility using target mode, but that has not solved the problem. Also zapped the PRAM, no change. I have heard of computers being stuck on the spinning gear stage, but the restart seems kind of strange. Any ideas on how I can proceed?

thanks

[wgood]

This happened to me the first weekend I had my iBook, and I ended up needing to reinstall OS X because I had corrupted the system. Let's hope that's not the problem with yours.

Do you have a bootable backup? If you don't, try using an Archive and Install from the install DVD. This will repair the system files that may or may not have been corrupted. Select "Preserve user and network settings" during the install and you won't overwrite your current user data.