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Grey screen when trying to boot Lepoard from CD

lightningsalesuk

lightningsalesuk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 24, 2017
28
1
England
I purchased a New HDD for my G5 and went to install OS X Lepoard from a disk onto the system. I hold C to boot from CD but all I get is a grey screen and the fans gradually get very fast and loud.

If I do not hold C it comes up with a folder with a ? in it.

Can someone help me with this?
 
The CD is in perfect condition, I should mention it is not an official Lepoard CD, I booted back into the Old drive and apparently I can restart and Install however I do not have admin password and name, is there a way to bypass this?
 
I agree with previous post. Leopard is likely more finicky about condition of both the DVD, and the optical drive.
Make sure that both are clean.
Do you see the DVD as a choice, when you restart, while holding the Option key (and the Leopard installer DVD is in the drive)?
I assume that you are using "CD" in a generic way to to refer to an optical disk.
Leopard was never made available on CDs, as was the previous OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

Yes, you can reset the new user, so that you can boot to a new user setup, then provide your own password for the system.
Here's one method for doing exactly that:
Create a new admin account from command line (single-user mode)
  1. Hold ⌘ + S on startup.
  2. Enter the following lines, pressing enter after each line
  3. mount -uw /
  4. rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
  5. reboot
  6. Your Mac will restart, complete the steps of creating a new account. ...
  7. After logging in to the new account, go to the Accounts preference pane.
  8. Select the old account, press the Reset Password...
  9. Now you will be able to use the old account, if you need to do that, and you will know that password :D
 
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Yes I am using CD in the generic term.

I bought the system very cheap for the case, It was advertised as dead however the system runs fine, I am yet to buy a keyboard for the system as I thought it was dead. Will any USB apple keyboard work with the system?. I have a A1312 Wireless keyboard however I do not think it would be able to connect at all.
 
Any USB keyboard will work.
You do NOT need to find an Apple-brand keyboard.
You may use a Windows keyboard, but when booting, you would notice that the alt (for option and Windows (for Command) will usually be reversed, so you may need to experiment a couple of times to decide which keys to hold for various boot options.

I don't think there is a wireless keyboard with model number A1312
A 2009 27-inch iMac is model A1312 (not the keyboard) Model number for the keyboard would be on the bottom of the keyboard, if you need to know that.
Your G5 would have to support the wireless keyboard that might have come with a Mac at least 5 years newer.
Not all G5s have bluetooth built-in, and that would need to be there before the G5 would respond to boot key commands from a wireless keyboard.
It's MUCH more likely to work from a USB wired keyboard.
 
I have never found using the 'C' key to boot from the optical drive to be reliable. It may indeed be working in this case, but I would try holding down OPTN and then selecting the OS X disk.
 
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It has been connection to apple at the final create an account page for a while. Is this normal?

Is there any internal products you can recommend for the G5, Like a network card Ethernet card faster than the on board one and other things which may bring the 2005 model G5 to 2017 ?
 
lightningsalesuk said:
It has been connection to apple at the final create an account page for a while. Is this normal?

Is there any internal products you can recommend for the G5, Like a network card Ethernet card faster than the on board one and other things which may bring the 2005 model G5 to 2017 ?
Click to expand...
It's normal, just trying to "register" the machine. I don't know exactly why Apple does that. The severs are shut down now, I believe, so it'll say it can't connect. Just continue through the setup.
 
So I went ahead and did the restart to re-install the operating system and it restarted and and then my monitor said no signal detected and shut off, the system is still on and the fans are starting to get loud again, no monitor signal at all.
 
That may be why you bought it as a system advertised as not working. Could be the graphics card is flaky.
Try reseating the graphics card in the slot, then do a PRAM reset.
 
"reseat", not reset.
Pull it out the slot, reseat again.
Just something to try if the card hasn't moved for some time.
In YOUR case, that might not be an issue. But try the PRAM reset anyway.
That's NOT just for the graphics card, but is a hardware reset for the NVRAM.
If you need to know how to do that, it's simply holding Option-Command-P-R on a restart.
You will hear the boot chime, so keep holding the same 4 keys until you hear the chime 2 more times, then release the keys.
You can also do an Open Firmware reset (which I usually do first on a PPC Mac)
Restart, holding Option-Command-O-F (that's the letter Oh, btw. :D )
You should see a couple of lines of text, then a text prompt.
Type reset-nvram, then press enter. You should get an OK
Type set-defaults, and again press enter. You should again get an OK
Type reset-all, and again press enter.
Your Mac will restart then.
I usually will then do the PRAM reset at that time. It's not terribly important if you have already just done that PRAM reset.
Should restart - all assuming that you can see anything on the screen. (I have done the open firmware reset, even with a blank screen. You know if it completes, with the last reset-all, when you should get a boot chime as your Mac restarts.
If the video still doesn't come on - try replacing all the RAM with known good RAM sticks. You should only need one good pair, as you are just trying to get it to boot with working video.

Video working now?
 
DeltaMac said:
"reseat", not reset.
Pull it out the slot, reseat again.
Just something to try if the card hasn't moved for some time.
In YOUR case, that might not be an issue. But try the PRAM reset anyway.
That's NOT just for the graphics card, but is a hardware reset for the NVRAM.
If you need to know how to do that, it's simply holding Option-Command-P-R on a restart.
You will hear the boot chime, so keep holding the same 4 keys until you hear the chime 2 more times, then release the keys.
You can also do an Open Firmware reset (which I usually do first on a PPC Mac)
Restart, holding Option-Command-O-F (that's the letter Oh, btw. :D )
You should see a couple of lines of text, then a text prompt.
Type reset-nvram, then press enter. You should get an OK
Type set-defaults, and again press enter. You should again get an OK
Type reset-all, and again press enter.
Your Mac will restart then.
I usually will then do the PRAM reset at that time. It's not terribly important if you have already just done that PRAM reset.
Should restart - all assuming that you can see anything on the screen. (I have done the open firmware reset, even with a blank screen. You know if it completes, with the last reset-all, when you should get a boot chime as your Mac restarts.
If the video still doesn't come on - try replacing all the RAM with known good RAM sticks. You should only need one good pair, as you are just trying to get it to boot with working video.

Video working now?
Click to expand...

What would Option+command be on a non-apple keyboard?
[doublepost=1495910514][/doublepost]
AmazingHenry said:
Take the card out and put it back in.

To reset the PRAM, restart the Mac while holding down command+option+p+r. Hold them until you hear a second startup chime.
[doublepost=1495908551][/doublepost]@DeltaMac you beat me! :D
Click to expand...
Okay So I have tried 5 times now, I hear the first initial beep, then it reboots and I hear a second beep but then it turns on and it boots fully and does not beep again.
 
DeltaMac said:
"reseat", not reset.
Pull it out the slot, reseat again.
Just something to try if the card hasn't moved for some time.
In YOUR case, that might not be an issue. But try the PRAM reset anyway.
That's NOT just for the graphics card, but is a hardware reset for the NVRAM.
If you need to know how to do that, it's simply holding Option-Command-P-R on a restart.
You will hear the boot chime, so keep holding the same 4 keys until you hear the chime 2 more times, then release the keys.
You can also do an Open Firmware reset (which I usually do first on a PPC Mac)
Restart, holding Option-Command-O-F (that's the letter Oh, btw. :D )
You should see a couple of lines of text, then a text prompt.
Type reset-nvram, then press enter. You should get an OK
Type set-defaults, and again press enter. You should again get an OK
Type reset-all, and again press enter.
Your Mac will restart then.
I usually will then do the PRAM reset at that time. It's not terribly important if you have already just done that PRAM reset.
Should restart - all assuming that you can see anything on the screen. (I have done the open firmware reset, even with a blank screen. You know if it completes, with the last reset-all, when you should get a boot chime as your Mac restarts.
If the video still doesn't come on - try replacing all the RAM with known good RAM sticks. You should only need one good pair, as you are just trying to get it to boot with working video.

Video working now?
Click to expand...
Hi,

I hope I am not causing any confusion. The video only stops working when I click restart to install leopard. It reboots pops up with a grey screen for half a second then looses video.
 
lightningsalesuk said:
What would Option+command be on a non-apple keyboard?
[doublepost=1495910514][/doublepost]
Okay So I have tried 5 times now, I hear the first initial beep, then it reboots and I hear a second beep but then it turns on and it boots fully and does not beep again.
Click to expand...
If your keyboard is for Windows (and has a Windows key near the bottom left corner), then the equivalent to Option-Command will be Windows-Alt, and the correct keys for the PRAM reset will be Alt-Windows-P-R. If you get ONLY the one beep, then nothing else, or just boots to your system, then the keyboard is not working correctly for those boot commands, and I would suggest that you try a different, wired USB keyboard.
The keyboard should be a USB wired keyboard, not wireless.
Can you get to the open firmware screen, and try those commands that I posted? The keys would be Windows-Alt-O-F
Again, the O is the letter oh, not the number zed.

Does your Leopard installer DVD show up on the boot picker screen? (where you restart while holding the Alt key)
If you do NOT see the Leopard installer DVD as one of the choices on THAT screen, then you need to find (or burn) a Leopard installer DVD that is correctly configured for booting.
 
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I managed to reset the PRAM and firmware reset. I purchased the disk from a large seller that makes bootable OS X.
The boot picker screen seems to be frozen and only has a HDD on it. I have another Apple Lepoard era drive I have not tested. I will try and boot into it.
 
Just had an idea.

Download a Leopard image, restore it to a USB flash drive, and boot from the flash drive. No pesky optical drive problems.

Leopard can be downloaded at the Macintosh Garden. We'll need more specs on your G5 to determine the command we need to boot it from USB.
 
Either your Leopard DVD disk is no good, or the optical drive is not reading the DVD properly.
I suspect the disk (the DVD, not the drive) is faulty.

Sounds like you CAN boot to the present hard drive, so start up with that hard drive.
Insert the DVD, wait for it to mount.
Open System Preferences, then the Startup Disk pref pane.
Does your Leopard installer DVD appear there as a choice?
 
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Okay a suspected dead drive I managed to get working has Lepoard on it! It has a test account with a password I guessed and a locked account, I followed your steps to make an admin account and now I seem to be in control of this system, I used carbon boot clone to clone it onto the new HDD with no problems.

Sorry to mess you guys around it just seems either the DVD or DVD drive is broken.

I am unable to access the internet though. It has an Ethernet port plugged it and it also could use airport. Is the internet so slow on the device that is cannot open a browser?
 
If you are confused about the "... give the green light" question: In the Network pref pane, click on "Assist Me...", then click on the Diagnostics button.
There's your green light!
OK, several green lights, reporting a (likely) working network/internet connection. That will also give you some assistance, if all lights are not green at the time.
 
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Yes they are all green. however when I click on safari it loads a quarter of the bar wit the url in (blue) and stays like that. I have ordered a Network card that is pci-x and I also have a USB to Ethernet port/ USB hub on the way as well.
 
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