Leopard Virus? Dying Hard Drive? Startup problems...

[HansonPiano]

After I installed Leopard, last night when I powered up the iMac G5 (2005, 20 inch model) at 400GB hard drive, 2GB memory, 2Ghz powerPC, I got a flashing globe followed by alternating flashing Mac smiley icon and a folder with a "?" mark on it. I posted a video of what my screen looked like for 15 minutes before finally proceeding to the login screen (I was relieved). Immediately I drove to the local store and bought a Maxtor OneTouch4 500GB external hard drive and backed up the entire system with Time Machine (seems to have worked fine).

Here is the link to the video I posted: http://youtube.com/watch?v=yDL_whGKjsU

Now I'm afraid to restart the computer and have the death screen again. I think that maybe next time it won't get to the login screen. Has anyone seen this before? What could it mean? A friend told me to verify and repair disk permissions but even that didn't seem to do anything. I don't have Apple Care and my warranty has run out...

 

[zioxide]

the ? means it cant find your startup disk.

try resetting the pram (search google for instructions) and then see if it still happens.

if it still happens after resetting pram, you could try repairing the hard drive (put the restore cds in, go to disk utility, etc)

if that doesn't help either, you may need a new drive.

 

[xUKHCx]

flashing globe means it is looking for a network boot, this is probably the cause of the long delay as it will naturally have a longer timeout.

Do as suggested and reset the pram as that stores the boot method. This will cause it to revert to the internal drive.

cmd+opt+p+r on booting

Or if you have already booted go to system preferences and startup disk change it to the internal drive rather than NetBoot.

Edit: Not only are there multiple threads on this already, entering the term flashing globe into Google returns this result as number one

 

[HansonPiano]

Hooray

Thanks so much for your input, it resolved my problem! I made a big deal out of a simple matter. Macs rule...