DP 450mhz G4 Stuck at Starting Mac OS X 10.4

[ahollywoodcraig]

Hi all,
I have a dual 450mhz G4 with 768mb of Ram and a 30gb HD.
This machine was given to me by my wife's work and upon first turning it on everything booted and loaded properly. I decided to wipe it clean and tried an erase and install from a retail tiger disk. Everything appeared to be fine with the install process, but when the machine went to boot for the first time it hangs at the "Starting Mac OS X" screen with the progress bar full. I googled the issue and tried every suggestion I found including booting from the install dvd and repairing the disk and permissions with disk utility. I also rebuilt the directories with DiskWarrior. The only thing I have not been able to do is run TechTool Pro because for some reason I can't get it to work when I boot from the disk. This problem is growing increasingly frustrating so any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!!

Craig

 

[n8mac]

That comp should be able to run Tiger just fine.

What system did it have on it when you first received it?

Did you check to see if it needed a firmware update at Apple.com prior to installing? Some Macs do, some don't.

Does it have any extra hardware connected like extra hard drives, external stuff?

 

[ahollywoodcraig]

It was running Tiger when I got it. I planned on using this machine as a basic word processing/web based activities unit, and there was some design and other software from it's previous life that was hogging up space so I tried the erase and install. My gut is telling me something is wrong with the hd, but I wanted to get a second opinion. I have no other peripherals connected.

Any other thoughts?

Thanks!

Craig

 

[CarlsonCustoms]

If you have another mac try booting the computer in target disk mode to see if the hd is good, you could also try to boot from a firewire drive to elminate the internal drive as the problem.

Zack

 

[ahollywoodcraig]

If you have another mac try booting the computer in target disk mode to see if the hd is good, you could also try to boot from a firewire drive to elminate the internal drive as the problem.

Zack

I was able to boot in target disk mode, and the drive appears to be fine, but I'm not a hundred percent sure what I'm looking for to determine if the drive is bad. I ran diskwarrior on the drive and did whatever it suggested. I tried another Tiger Dvd and it won't even complete the install.
It gives me an error saying it couldn't finish. I'm trying my original dvd one more time. Any other thoughts?

Thanks!

Craig

 

[n8mac]

You can try erasing and installing (my way as follows) one more time to ensure the HD is fine. Or else look at the rest of the hardware (with possible repairs $$).

Erasing and installing my way. My method will take a lot longer than just reinstalling so make sure you have enough time.
1. Boot off Tiger DVD
2. Go to Utilities - Disk utility - First aid tab
3. On the left is a list. At the top of the list is HD icon followed by it's capacity. Click it.
At the bottom of the pane look for 'S.M.A.R.T. status'. It should say 'Verified'. If it doesn't let us know.
4. Back to the list on the left click on the name of your HD. At the bottom look for 'Format'.
It should say either 'Mac OS Extended' or 'Mac OS Extended Journaled'. If it doesn't let us know.
5. Now click the 'Verify disk' button. If any problems are found click the 'Repair disk' button and let us know what problems it found.
6. Now click the 'erase' tab.
Make sure Volume Format = Mac OS Extended (journaled)
Click the 'Security options' button.
Click the 'Zero out data' option. Click OK.
Click the 'erase' button. Will take some time.
7. Quit 'Disk utility' and proceed to install Tiger.

n8

 

[ahollywoodcraig]

Thanks for the reply.
I tried reinstalling from two different tiger dvds, and both failed. I went back and used disk utility while booting off the install disk and attempted to verify and repair the disk which left me with an error and didn't complete. I tried to repair permissions just for the hell of it and now I get a kernel panic every time. I've pretty much decided that it must be the drive. The funny thing is that on first boot everything worked, but after my attempt to erase and install it crapped out. This was just a project machine so thankfully I'm not dependent
on it. I'm going to replace the drive whenever I get time, but I would like to thank everyone who gave me advice.

Craig

 

[n8mac]

Your welcome.
That's the odd thing about hard drive failure. It can be sudden or a slow painful death