Pre-iSight G5 iMac never gets past white Apple screen.

[BurtonCCC]

At work, we have a 17" G5 iMac from back before the iSight was put in. We're an Apple shop, so we have the new iMac actually on the floor for people to try out. The old G5 this thread is addressing is up on a shelf, but we want to turn it on as a display model. We plug a temporary mouse and keyboard into it, but the machine never gets past the white Apple screen with the "I'm thinking" animation. After a minute or two, the fan turns on full blast, but the white screen remains without any signs of moving on. What is our problem?

Dan.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Can it boot into Single User Mode?

 

[BurtonCCC]

Can it boot into Single User Mode?

It depends on what that is... haha.

Daniel.

 

[BlizzardBomb]

I know its not helpful or anything but we've been getting quite a lot of "my iMac (pre-iSight) is buggered up" threads lately.

 

[pknz]

Yeah, mine is.

 

[Unorthodox]

My pre iSight iMac is "bugged" up too!

 

[IJ Reilly]

It depends on what that is... haha.

Daniel.

Hold down cmd-s on startup, until you see the black screen with white characters. From here (assuming this works), you can run fsck to check the integrity of the HD's directory. At the prompt, type:

fsck -fy [including the space, return]

If repairs have been reported, run fsck again until no repairs are reported (or it reports that the disk cannot be repaired). If repaired, at the prompt, type:

reboot [return]

I don't know if the source of other iMac booting problems have been isolated, but this is always a good place to start with diagnostics, no matter what kind of Mac you own.