Finally was able to get play with my iMac G4. This is what I am getting on the screen. It boots up to the apple logo but then after a few seconds this appears. Figured its a bad hard drive or could it be something else?
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Bad hard drive or something else?
- Thread starter Ghostbuster386
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Finally was able to get play with my iMac G4. This is what I am getting on the screen. It boots up to the apple logo but then after a few seconds this appears. Figured its a bad hard drive or could it be something else?
Bad hard drive or something else?
It gets stuck after the lines appear. I am going to try to boot from a different drive and see if that makes a difference.
It gets stuck after the lines appear. I am going to try to boot from a different drive and see if that makes a difference.
Try holding Opt at boot and seeing if the graphical corruption occurs in the boot selector. It isn't a surefire test but if it appears in the selector you have a worse issue than a hard drive/corrupt install. I have seen similar issues when OS X is about to complete booting and freezes before the "blue screen" appears that was attributed to hard drive failure.
Bad hard drive or something else?
Ok it boots up to the gray screen looking for a bootable drive then after a little bit of time the apple logo comes up. Gets the spinning wheel and then it comes up and freezes the whole screen and then after a few seconds starts with the spinning wheel again
Edit- it does not appear in when I hold down option.
Ok it boots up to the gray screen looking for a bootable drive then after a little bit of time the apple logo comes up. Gets the spinning wheel and then it comes up and freezes the whole screen and then after a few seconds starts with the spinning wheel again
Edit- it does not appear in when I hold down option.
If it does not appear in the boot selector then you cannot rule out GPU failure. If it does appear you know you have a GPU issue. I would throw a new drive in there or even try reloading OS X from scratch and freshly format the drive. Be sure to verify its integrity after install.
Ok awesome thanks guys. I am pretty sure it's just the drive but will keep an eye on the GPU as well
Since the OS X installer will load appropriate GPU drivers, if you notice any funky artifacts, lines, or corruption you can bet money on a GPU/monitor issue. Since it is right before it would switch to the blue screen during start up my money is on a dying hard drive or corrupt install though.
I agree with others that it's either a bad or failing GPU. I had this same issue with my iMac G5 not too long ago and after removing the drive that was in there and replacing it and trying again; it still did the same thing. Luckily I was able to save the RAM, BT module, AP, and 250GB HDD.
That looks like a GPU failure to me though I suppose a monitor failure could not be ruled out. Based on experience, GPU seems more likely.
Startup manager will be using a basic display mode hard coded into the firmware. The high res, millions of colour graphics driver is only initiated after the OS X kernel is loaded.
I had a similar problem on a PowerBook. If you can boot all the way through with extensions disabled (keep Shift button down after you hear the chime) then it is a GPU and not a corrupt HDD issue. Booting OSX with extensions disabled takes much longer than normal so be patient.
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Yeah atleast it looks like GPU fault, as others have pointed out, it's not uncommon for failing GPU to display clear picture when it is using basic driver without full acceleration. Of course the problem lie somewhere else in the motherboard, but it definetely looks like hardware problem and I don't suspect the hard drive.
I do think it is worth investigating with a fresh install of OS X or a new HD as I had a Mac that did this exact thing right when it would go to the blue screen but a fresh install cured it.
I was finally able to reinstall os x on the hard drive and everything seems to be working fine. Now has a fresh install of OS X 10.3 (wish I had 10.4 install disks). I will keep an eye on it and see if the GPU does end up going bad on me.
This post just single-handedly made nearly all of ours comments invalid, hahaha. Anyway, just continue to keep an eye on it like you said, but since you reloaded the OS and there doesn't seem to be any issues, I'm sure it's fine. Might have just been a wonky install.
Yeah I had a feeling it was just the install but knew I wouldn't know for sure until I tried. Now to just get my Powermac G4 Cube to take an OS now.
Edit: Does anyone know a version of Carbon Copy Cloner that works with OS X 10.3.9 or something similar?
Bad hard drive or something else?
Thank you. I will try it.
Edit: It didn't end up working. I will keep looking but thanks though.
Thank you. I will try it.
Edit: It didn't end up working. I will keep looking but thanks though.
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