Someone Please Help Me!!!!!

[babylonsteve]

I need some serious help here. Last night my iMac was on and the power went out. This morning when I boot it stays at the window with the apple logo and spinning circle. Am I completely screwed? Please help I've looked everywhere but to no avail.

Thanks
Steve

[basicfiend]

Sounds like your Mac can't find a boot disk (i.e. your hard drive is corrupted or (hopefully not) broken).

The solution is to provide your Mac with a disk to boot off of, and then use Disk Utility to repair your hard drive.

The easiest thing is to use the DVD restore that came with your computer. Put it in the drive and restart, holding down the option key. Hopefully you'll have an option to boot off the DVD and go from there.

[babylonsteve]

Ok next question how in the hell do I get the disk drive open? I can't use the eject on the keyboard. I have an iMac G4

Thanks
Steve

[Richard Richard]

Hello there.. turn the power off - turn power on hold down eject key (top right of keyboard) wait untill the little blighter ejects job done

Cheerrie Byyee

[babylonsteve]

Thanks but that didn't work it won't open still. And I have no boot disk because I bought it off ebay. Is there a way around this like flash drive? Or is there a way to reboot osx completely and start over?

Thanks
Steve

[mad jew]

Boot up holding OPTION. Does it give you a window showing your boot volumes (and hopefully OSX)?

If that doesn't work, try booting into Safe Mode by holding SHIFT at startup. Anything?

If you're still not gettin' lucky then boot up holding COMMAND-S to get into Single User Mode. If you get there, run fsck (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214) 'cause it's fun. Good luck! :)

[basicfiend]

Is there a way around this like flash drive? Or is there a way to reboot osx completely and start over?

Yes, you can boot off of a Firewire drive. Do you have one? (And does the iMac G4 have a firewire port?)

[babylonsteve]

No
No
No

Thanks for trying I appreciate it! So can I reboot the Mac at all?

Thanks
Steve

[babylonsteve]

Yes, you can boot off of a Firewire drive. Do you have one? (And does the iMac G4 have a firewire port?)
I have a flash drive sandisk. Not fire wire. Does that matter?

[mad jew]

It looks like you'll have to get some OSX discs then. If you run an Archive & Install (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120), you hopefully will retain your data. Since it's not getting into Single User Mode nor being shown the Choose Boot Volume screen, I think your problem may run deeper than merely a lost system folder. :o

[babylonsteve]

It looks like you'll have to get some OSX discs then. If you run an Archive & Install (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120), you hopefully will retain your data. Since it's not getting into Single User Mode nor being shown the Choose Boot Volume screen, I think your problem may run deeper than merely a lost system folder. :o

That I could do but I still can't get my dvd drive to open up from the keyboard. Any help there?

[mad jew]

Well, I think the lovely Richard Richard was onto it. Unless something's really wrong with your computer it should eject when you hold the mouse button at startup. What sort of keyboard do you have? Your iMac doesn't seem to be responding to any startup commands, which is a bit of a worry.

[basicfiend]

Here's one idea if you're really keen on getting the computer working or getting data off the drive:

You can take the hard drive out, put it in a USB enclosure (they're ~$25 at you nearest computer store), and mount it onto another Mac (there's a work around for PC, but I'll hope for the best). Then run disk utility on that computer.

Disk utility will be able to tell you if your hard disk is completely done, or whether you can salvage it.

If you're unlucky, you'll need to reinstall OS X (that is the OS, right?). In which case, you can partition the drive (still attached via USB) into two partitions. The first is your main partition and the second is an install partition that we'll use to bootstrap the computer. The second partition doesn't need to be big. Just enough to copy an Mac OS X Installation DVD/CD to it.

Now you can "restore" a Mac OS X install CD to the second partition. This will be a bootable partition! Remove hard drive from USB enclosure, reinstall into iMac, and restart. Hopefully it will boot off of the install partition and you'll be able to reinstall mac os x on the first partition. You can then remove the second partition.

[babylonsteve]

Boot up holding OPTION. Does it give you a window showing your boot volumes (and hopefully OSX)?

If that doesn't work, try booting into Safe Mode by holding SHIFT at startup. Anything?

If you're still not gettin' lucky then boot up holding COMMAND-S to get into Single User Mode. If you get there, run fsck (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214) 'cause it's fun. Good luck! :)

After a second try I got the fsck to work! I dont know what I was doing wrong but I got it right! I appreciate everyones help and am now fully running! THANKS SO MUCH!!!!

Again I can't say it enough
Thank you all
Steve

[mad jew]

Err, so you're back into OSX? :)

[babylonsteve]

Err, so you're back into OSX? :)

YES Thanks very very much!

[Richard Richard]

I would have got the Mouse button hold down thingy -

Glad you got it working :) Saves you skipping it

Cheerrie Byyee

[mad jew]

Fantastic! Well done mate. :)