The Old G5 not booting up. What to do.

Hello there.

This will be a super noob thread so hopefully there will be people out there to answer my questions!
This is my mom's computer, who I am 400 miles away from, so I have tried to get as much info from her as possible. Then I will be relaying all the advice to her!

So I appreciate all the help and she will too.

The specs of her G5 are:

Apple G5 2.0GHZ DP 512/160/SD/GF52K/56K
+1GB PC3200 KIT For PM g5 (2x512MB)

I believe it is about 8 years old.

She has mainly used the G5 for graphic designing with the adobe cs and casual internet surfing.

Currently, when she turns on her G5, this is how she describes it:

" It revs up. Then gets louder. And revs even louder. It boots to the apple logo, but stays on the apple logo. It makes the apple sound. Then it again revs louder and louder."

Then she turns it off because it gets louder.

I am assuming it is a harddrive issue, since the computer is relatively aging.

But then again, maybe not. What else could it be?

What should be the next step taken to repairing the mac?
She does not have apple care, should she get it so it can be diagnosed by the apple store? geek squad?

And if it is the harddrive, how easy is that to replace. I know harddrives are quite inexpensive nowadays and the G5 was made that year to be pretty customizable, but does she need to have her old system disks? Can she boot up to the new snow leopard?
(first things first, maybe I am getting too far ahead of myself in questions)

I appreciate all the advice. THANKS!

thanks

Ok, thanks, great headstart.

Is there a way to specifically diagnose a harddrive?
Should she try to boot up first with a system disk, or should she go get a new harddrive to test if this one is bad?

Also, a question with system disks. Since she does not have the original disks, and she would like to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, she can just obtain that disk and is good to go?
Is there any issue with drivers and software that is specifically in the original disks?

Thank you for your advice.

I personally haven't had to troubleshoot a Mac before and I have been using them for my whole life.
And now I have my own imac i7 woohoo. Knock on wood hopefully no trouble shooting for that one.

js81 said:

If its "revving up" that's the fan you're hearing. Sounds like a cooling (or lack there of) issue to me.

Click to expand...

That is what crossed my mind actually.

It has always revved, but from what I remember not too loud.
It has def. never been a quiet computer.

Any reason this could make the computer not start up?

spinnerlys:

thanks for the info and quick response.

I've looked up the prices, I'll let her know and decide if she wants to upgrade still!