Hi all, I just upgraded from a G4 400 to a MDD 1.25 with Leopard 10.5.8 on a new 120G HD. I upped the RAM to 2 gig, then connected an external Firewire HD and turned on Time machine. Now, when I boot or restart I get 3.5 mins of dark screen with the monitor standby light on, then another 1.5 mins of grey screen before the blue desktop. I tried reinstalling the original 1 gig ram, disconnecting the external HD, and turning off TM, but still the same. While I am staring at a blank screen I can't hear any HD reading noises - they start when it begins to boot. Once started the machine is great (although noise from the PSU fans is a PITA) and so much quicker than the old one. Last time I had slow boot problems the cause was a failing HD, but this one is new. No disks came with the machine. I have run Disk Utility and found no problems. Please can anyone help?
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G4 MDD slow boot (5 mins!)
- Thread starter alan4385
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Try booting in verbose mode http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492 and see if it sticks on something specific. If you post that people might be able to help. I presume it doesn't seem overly slow if you try booting from an OS install disk etc?
CubeHacker
macrumors 65816
Just curious, but is there a flashed PC video card in that MDD? There were a few flashed cards that would cause really long boot times unless you removed a file or two under OSX.
I had that problem once installing an upgraded CPU too turned out I had the little switches on the upgrade configured for the wrong kind of motherboard.
Hi, many thanks for your replies. The video card is an ATI, there is a date 2001 on it but no other details I can see. I tried booting in verbose mode but it just booted as before, ie dark screen 3 mins etc. What was supposed to happen? I also tried zapping the p ram, but nothing happened - just one start tone, then another slow boot, no matter how long I held down the keys. Does that mean anything? Thanks again, Alan
Hi again, I don't have Leopard disks as the new machine came without any. Could I boot from the Tiger disk I had with the old G4?
OK, I have another problem - the drive doors won't open, and the computer doesn't know I have any optical drives installed. I guess it's b*ggered?