3 year old imac dies... do I have any recourse?

[DocV]

No. You don't get to the Mac OS X desktop or even the boot DVD user interface. What you describe is nowhere near that far. The OS needs to load a driver to support rendering the more complex objects that both the desktop and the DVD installer use. The "GFX0: family specific matching fails" may mean the graphics hardware is no longer recognizable to Mac OS so it will not boot to a desktop or a GUI installer. I don't see anywhere that you said you saw any icon or object that resembled as such. The hard drive and DVD icons are what you see if you hold down the option key BEFORE booting an OS, something that doesn't require the full features of a graphics driver.

Not sure were you're getting the part about getting "to the Mac OS X desktop or even the boot DVD user interface" I don't recall saying that. To the contrary, I've been saying all along that I can not get that far. But earlier someone suggested the graphics card failure to which I replied, how would I be able to get to a graphic mode [not the full blow OS] where I can choose which drive to boot from? Here's what it looks like, but without the wifi bar below:

But if I understand what your're saying, that the graphics card may still be able to dispay simple graphics like the one above, just not power the entire OS?

 

[dakhein]

But if I understand what your're saying, that the graphics card may still be able to dispay simple graphics like the one above, just not power the entire OS?

Correct, that's what I'm speculating. Someone at Apple should be able to make a determination from that log.

 

[DocV]

In other macs I've had, when the video car begins to fail, you could always still boot in 16bit or even 8bit mode. If I can get 16bix graphics like the ones I showed you, why doesn't it fall back to criple mode and keep working?

 

[js81]

This reminds me why I love Macs - they rarely fail, but boy when they do...

Have you tried a Linux Live CD? If I were you, I'd download Ubuntu (my distro of choice) and try to boot from the live CD. If you can get into Ubuntu and everything functions semi-normally, then it probably is either a corrupted install of OS X or a bad/failing hard drive.

I have been servicing Macs and PCs for 10+ years now (not as my primary, every day job, but regularly on-the-side) - if I were to have your Mac on my work bench, the first thing I would do would be to try to boot it from an external drive with OS X installed. However, if you're not uber-techy, you probably don't have an external drive with OS X installed; my next go-to is Ubuntu, which you can boot from a CD.

Try it - and best of luck. If Ubuntu doesn't work either, then yes, you're probably in need of a new logic board...

 

[dakhein]

In other macs I've had, when the video car begins to fail, you could always still boot in 16bit or even 8bit mode. If I can get 16bix graphics like the ones I showed you, why doesn't it fall back to criple mode and keep working?

256 color depth driver support was removed in starting in Leopard. Graphics acceleration was built in to the Windows System so I'm only guessing that they either did too much to go back to cripple mode or plain didn't want people running it like that.

 

[DocV]

This reminds me why I love Macs - they rarely fail, but boy when they do...

Have you tried a Linux Live CD? If I were you, I'd download Ubuntu (my distro of choice) and try to boot from the live CD. If you can get into Ubuntu and everything functions semi-normally, then it probably is either a corrupted install of OS X or a bad/failing hard drive.

I have been servicing Macs and PCs for 10+ years now (not as my primary, every day job, but regularly on-the-side) - if I were to have your Mac on my work bench, the first thing I would do would be to try to boot it from an external drive with OS X installed. However, if you're not uber-techy, you probably don't have an external drive with OS X installed; my next go-to is Ubuntu, which you can boot from a CD.

Try it - and best of luck. If Ubuntu doesn't work either, then yes, you're probably in need of a new logic board...

Unfortunately, I don't have an external with a clean install and since I don't have another mac, [I'm on a crappy little Windows Vista laptop right now] even the Unbutu suggestion is an issue. That said, if it is indeed a corrupt OS, shouldn't I be able to format the HD, which should then bypass whatever is preventing me from booting from the Install DVD? Wouldn't that be essentially the same as installing a brand new formatted HD?

 

[McGiord]

As the Apple Hardware Test ran and passed OK, the graphics card was working.
It seems the kernel is not loading, therefore the best thing to try next is a clean install of Mac OS X.
What is not clear is why you cannot boot front the optical drive win the original OS X disc.
Maybe the firmware was updated and the disc is no longer working?
As suggested before go back to the genius bar and ask for help to do the repair or re-install using an external HDD or target disk mode.
Make reference to the AHT results you had as OK.

 

[SDColorado]

What is not clear is why you cannot boot front he optical drive win the original OS X disc.
Maybe the firmware was updated and the disc is no longer working?

Another possibility, is that I believe even when you boot from CD, that part of the boot procedure is that that the CD will examine your HDD for a valid system there. From what I understand a corrupt journal can lead to it constantly searching, and failure to boot.

 

[DocV]

As the Apple Hardware Test ran and passed OK, the graphics card was working.
It seems the kernel is not loading, therefore the best thing to try next is a clean install of Mac OS X.
What is not clear is why you cannot boot front he optical drive win the original OS X disc.
Maybe the firmware was updated and the disc is no longer working?
As suggested before go back to the genius bar and ask for help to do the install using an external HDD or target disk mode.
Make reference to the AHT results you had as OK.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not in a hurry to go back to the genius bar, I'd have to wait two days for an appointment and the last time I was there, the guy seemed more interested in herding me out the door and move on to the next customer, rather than trying to take the time fix my mac. As far as I'm concerned, that's a last resort. In fact, even the last guy at apple tech support I spoke with suggested going with a third party repair facility, rather than going back to the apple store. It doesn't exactly instill a lot of confidence in the apple store. But that's all beside the point and I'm getting off track.

In the mean time, it almost seems as if something in the OS is corrupt and preventing either the HD or DVD from completing the boot process, so if I can wipe out the OS on the HD, then maybe it can complete the process?

So what about formatting the current HD and seeing if I can boot from the install DVD then? Or if that doesn't work, installing a new HD. What are your thoughts?

 

[McGiord]

To be perfectly honest, I'm not in a hurry to go back to the genius bar, I'd have to wait two days for an appointment and the last time I was there, the guy seemed more interested in herding me out the door and move on to the next customer, rather than trying to take the time fix my mac. As far as I'm concerned, that's a last resort. In fact, even the last guy at apple tech support I spoke with suggested going with a third party repair facility, rather than going back to the apple store. It doesn't exactly instill a lot of confidence in the apple store. But that's all beside the point and I'm getting off track.

In the mean time, it almost seems as if something in the OS is corrupt and preventing either the HD or DVD from completing the boot process, so if I can wipe out the OS on the HD, then maybe it can complete the process?

So what about formatting the current HD and seeing if I can boot from the install DVD then? Or if that doesn't work, installing a new HD. What are your thoughts?

My initial thoughts are:
1- First secure the data. Be sure that the Time Machine back up is actually working, and that you can preserve all the files. The Time Machine back up might contain the corruption of OS X. Instead of trusting Time Machine, been able to copy the important documents out of the HDD: by connecting to it via Target Disk Mode or removing the HDD from the iMac and connecting it to another Mac.
2- Then wipe the suspect HDD: formatting and partitioning it. You can do this from another Mac (preferable), but also from your iMac.
To do this you have to boot from another Mac OS X partition (HDD, disc, other Max).
Or in Single User Mode with UNIX commands.
3- Then install OS X in the HDD. If the optical drive is actually working fine, you are supposed to be able to do this right now, but for whatever reason you can't. Use a host Mac to do this.
4- Try all the basic things like resetting the PRAM, and other fsck iterations.
5- Call Apple to get a replacement OS X disc.
6- Get a local friend to help you with a host Mac for a couple hours, a MacBook will be fine.

What is the kernel panic error you are getting now?

 

[DocV]

Not sure how I would verify the Timemachine Back Up data if I can't even get my machine to boot.

My first and foremost priority is to see if my imac is even salvagable or if I have to scrap it. Whether or not my TimeMachine data is corrupt too or not, is a bit secondary right now. Worst case, if I can get a working machine again, whether I fix this one or buy new, I can always selectively recover my data from the the external TimeMachine backup drive.

That said, remember, I can't boot to the DVD, but I suspect it may be due to corrupt data in the OS that prevents it from getting beyond a certain point, which is why I want to format my HD, essentially making it appear as a new blank HD.

I'm trying to accomplish the same thing as installing a new HD without the expense of buying one or the time and hassle of tearing my machine appart to install it. I've done it before, it's a drag.

If all I have to do is format or zero out the internal HD I have now, [which I should be able to do from the command line in single user mode] shouldn't the end result be the same as intalling a new drive? Assuming it's corrupted OS on the internal hd that's causing all my problems. *Then hopefully* I should be able to boot from the install DVD.

If that fails, I know it could be a host of other things, but I just want to rule that out before I move on to the next, more costly and time consuming tasks.

Does this make sense?

I do have a freind with a mac, but he's lives far away and is pretty hard to track down schedule wise... so that's even further down the list of things to try. I'm just trying to go with whatever I can do here in my home, right now, without spending a lot of money. If that fails, *then* it's on to other things.

BTW, I came across this and I'm connsidering giving it a try. What are your thoughts?

To zero the empty space quickly, reboot into sinlge-user mode and read the instructions that pop up.
Ignore the line that contains fsck.
You want the line that begins with
/sbin/mount (or similar)

After the volume remounts as writeable, type :

/bin/rm -rf /Users
cat /dev/random > bigfile

and go away for a while. This will remove your users directories and write random characters over the old data.​

 

[McGiord]

Once again, don't be so confident on the Time Machine backup for all your documents.
Before formatting the HDD, be sure that you have access to all your files, and that you are confident that they are OK.

To format the HDD via the Terminal, I have never done it as I prefer to do that with Disk Utility, so I will investigate a little before giving you an answer for the commands.

In the mean time in the terminal you can do this:
man diskutil
This will give you the manual details of this command. Read about it and you will be more confident once you understand it.


And re-checking here, did you ever received a message after the fsck command that the Volume appears to be OK?

Note from Apple support doc:
""""""
If fsck found issues and has altered, repaired, or fixed anything, it will display this message:
***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
Important: If this message appears, repeat the fsck command you typed in step 2 until fsck tells you that your volume appears to be OK (first-pass repairs may uncover additional issues, so this is a normal thing to do).
""""""

 

[DocV]

Yes, I did receive the "OK" .

 

[MatthewAMEL]

Do you have access to any other Macs? Running 10.5 of higher?

How about other copies of the OS X DVD you could try booting from?

Any way you can try booting in Target Disk Mode?

If you have access to another Mac, you could try building a bootable USB.

I think you may have run into a combo of several small issues at once that need to be fixed one-by-one.

1st step would be getting your Mac booted into the GUI. You've got to get your hands on a 'known-good' copy of OS X (DVD, USB, external HDD).

Keep us posted.

BTW- sorry if you've tried all this stuff before.

Based on your logs, you've got corruption in the Keychain/security files. A 'hail mary' might also to try the 'Reset Password Utility' in the 10.5 and later boot menu.

 

[js81]

Unfortunately, I don't have an external with a clean install and since I don't have another mac, [I'm on a crappy little Windows Vista laptop right now] even the Unbutu suggestion is an issue. That said, if it is indeed a corrupt OS, shouldn't I be able to format the HD, which should then bypass whatever is preventing me from booting from the Install DVD? Wouldn't that be essentially the same as installing a brand new formatted HD?

You can download and burn an Ubuntu disc from Windows - just get the ISO from Ubuntu.com (32-bit is the most compatible, even if you can run 64-bit) and burn it to disc. If you don't have something to burn the ISO, you can get CDBurnerXP for free.

As for your second question, yeah, you should still be able to format and reinstall, even if the OS install is corrupt. Maybe its the hard drive itself, then.. regardless, booting from either an Ubuntu disc or an external drive with OS X would answer that. A reinstall would be the same as a new drive, unless the drive itself was failing.

Can you get access to another Mac? Maybe a friend, co-worker, school lab, etc. An external drive with OS X would STILL definitely be the best test in this situation...

 

[DocV]

Looks like I may be able to get access to another mac after all. Can you point me to a link that explains how to do the boot from another machine?

 

[js81]

Looks like I may be able to get access to another mac after all. Can you point me to a link that explains how to do the boot from another machine?

Have you installed Mac OS X before? If so, all you'll need are your OS X DVD and an external hard drive (preferably empty so you don't accidentally lose any data). Boot the Mac from the OS X DVD. Once booted up, you'll need to partition the external hard drive with Disk Utility - click the top menu "Utilities" and choose Disk Utility. Find the external drive (should have a USB icon beside it) and click it, choose partition and partition the drive as HFS+ Journaled. Then, close Disk Utility and simply walk through the OS X installer - BE SURE TO CHOOSE YOUR DESTINATION AS THE EXTERNAL DRIVE, NOT THE MAC'S INTERNAL or else you'll overwrite the donor Mac!

After that's all finished, take that fresh install external to YOUR Mac and boot from it by holding option at start-up (just like you would to boot Windows) and choosing the external drive.

Good luck!

NOTE: If you DON'T have an OS X install DVD (or all you have are you computer's recovery DVDs), I would suggest buying Snow Leopard (10.6) - you can still get it from the Apple Store online for $29; since your Mac has Leopard anyway, it would be a worthwhile upgrade. And if you can't raise yours from the dead, SL is strangely selling for more than $29 used on eBay.

EDIT: Another option, thought not quite as desireable, would be to clone the donor Mac's hard drive to the external using Carbon Copy Cloner (or something similar). The ethical thing to do, though, would be to wipe it after using it, as you would have copies of all the donor's software...

 

[DocV]

Good news, got my hands a another clean mac and have been able to mount my bad mac using firewire and target boot. I'm currently copying over the user folder, to salvage all my important files, just to be safe. Once that's completed,[in about five hours according to the copy window] what do I do to get the damaged machine back to life so I can use it again?

By the way, for the record, the first time I tried to start up the bad mac, I got the continuous chime. Tried a second time and got the same thing; so I waited a few mins and sure enough, on the third try it powered up no problem. So my question is this, since I've managed to get up and running using target boot, does that mean I *don't* have a logic board problem and all I need to do now is repair/reinstall the OS and wipe the slate clean? ...Or does the fact that it did the continual chime a couple times mea,n I just got lucky on the third try and eventually, it wont power up at all?

 

[onthecouchagain]

Why does it seem like iMacs have such a high failure rate?

 

[MatthewAMEL]

Glad to hear that Target Disk Mode worked. At least you can move your data somewhere safe.

The best way to answer your question would be to run the AHT for an extended session. Overnight, or at least 8 hours is my recommendation. You can set it to loop for a specific number of times or an amount of time.

Once you get your data off the drive, use Disk Utility to reformat the drive and do a 'clean install' of OS X.

Before you re-install, you can also use Disk Utility to see if there are any errors. If it finds and fixes some, you could just try a regular reboot.

 

[ancelrick]

Why does it seem like iMacs have such a high failure rate?

people post more when they have trouble.

 

[monokakata]

Good news, got my hands a another clean mac and have been able to mount my bad mac using firewire and target boot. I'm currently copying over the user folder, to salvage all my important files, just to be safe. Once that's completed,[in about five hours according to the copy window] what do I do to get the damaged machine back to life so I can use it again?

Honestly, I'd go ahead with installing a known-to-be-good drive, and then try to put a fresh OS X on it. I don't think we're ready to exclude drive failure as the cause of all this. With a fresh drive installed, then either you're going to be able to install OS X from DVD, or not.

If you can, then the drive was at fault. If you still can't, then it's probably the logic board.

 

[marzer]

FWIW, a year or two ago my 2008 24 iMac was exhibiting similar symptoms. When I couldn't boot the hard drive or the original DVD install disk, I assumed is must be the circuit boards or perhaps RAM. (I too was getting either past the chime or a long drawn out chime.) Took it to a repair shop, and to my surprise it was the hard drive. It was swapped out and all's been fine since.

 

[thekev]

Good news, got my hands a another clean mac and have been able to mount my bad mac using firewire and target boot. I'm currently copying over the user folder, to salvage all my important files, just to be safe. Once that's completed,[in about five hours according to the copy window] what do I do to get the damaged machine back to life so I can use it again?

By the way, for the record, the first time I tried to start up the bad mac, I got the continuous chime. Tried a second time and got the same thing; so I waited a few mins and sure enough, on the third try it powered up no problem. So my question is this, since I've managed to get up and running using target boot, does that mean I *don't* have a logic board problem and all I need to do now is repair/reinstall the OS and wipe the slate clean? ...Or does the fact that it did the continual chime a couple times mea,n I just got lucky on the third try and eventually, it wont power up at all?

That sucks that you're still having trouble .

Why does it seem like iMacs have such a high failure rate?

Imacs can be bricked by too many different things, and they really aren't designed for the duty cycle of something like a mac pro. That's why I won't buy one.

 

[DocV]

Besides the "users folder", what other files do I need to copy, like my iCal Events, Contacts and Bookmarks? What else is there that I can't think of right now?