Help, power went out, mini won't boot

[mrthieme]

Well, the title says it all. The power went out on my street for a second or two, and now when I turn on the mini I get a grey screen with a little folder in the middle that flashes between the finder face and a question mark. Sound familiar to anyone?
How do I/should I boot from the disc.

 

[gauchogolfer]

Well, the title says it all. The power went out on my street for a second or two, and now when I turn on the mini I get a grey screen with a little folder in the middle that flashes between the finder face and a question mark. Sound familiar to anyone?
How do I/should I boot from the disc.

I would boot into single-user mode, then run fsck to check the file structure. Here's the instruction list for you (Apple.com).

Single-user mode

fsck

 

[mrthieme]

It's a G4 mini that has been in use for quite a little while now, I'm afraid that a power surge has fried something.

 

[gauchogolfer]

It's a G4 mini that has been in use for quite a little while now, I'm afraid that a power surge has fried something.

Perhaps that's the case, but whenever a machine has an unexpected shutdown, it's not a bad idea to run fsck on the startup volume.

 

[TheAnswer]

You might also try starting up while holding the option key to see if your hard drive appears on the bootup volume list.

Also try booting up with the install CD/DVD by holding down C during startup.

 

[mopppish]

We've got a G4 tower at work that will only startup after a power outage if I remove the battery for a minute, put it back in, and then hit the power button.

 

[mrthieme]

Thanks for the help so far, I tried the option key boot but do not get a disc to select. I figured I would try to reinstall OSX, but when I get to the "select a destination" prompt there are no choices displayed, as if it is not seeing the drive I guess. I'm calling my geniuses.

 

[mrthieme]

Here is how things stand now.
Hardware test runs and everything passes including mass storage.
Disk Utility only shows the Tiger Install Disc (which I can not eject)
When I try and install Tiger, I get no options for Select a Destination.
When I try to restart running Tiger on the disc I get a big power button logo with code overlayed.

Anything sound familiar?

 

[iW00t]

Try resetting your PMU/PRAM?

Macs are extremely reliable machines, it should not crash just because of a small power failure. There must have been something that you have not told us. Did you install any third party applications that loads in Kernel extensions or something?

 

[mrthieme]

Well, I took the mini over to my dad's house to show him how the drive doesn't show up when I boot with option key, and it started up like nothing ever happened. Go figure! So we bought a six pack of Blue Moon White Belgian beer and took the mini apart and put in a larger hard drive he had kicking around. Reinstalled OSX and everything is fine. So I started in a panic and ended up with an upgrade. Thanks to all for the suggestions. I guess it just needed to get out of the house and go for a little ride in the car.

 

[SuperCompu2]

Kind of a funny end to things, maybe I'll try driving my computers around when they crash next time.

Happy to hear everything worked out alright!

 

[fivetoadsloth]

Well, I took the mini over to my dad's house to show him how the drive doesn't show up when I boot with option key, and it started up like nothing ever happened. Go figure! So we bought a six pack of Blue Moon White Belgian beer and took the mini apart and put in a larger hard drive he had kicking around. Reinstalled OSX and everything is fine. So I started in a panic and ended up with an upgrade. Thanks to all for the suggestions. I guess it just needed to get out of the house and go for a little ride in the car.

Good to hear, good luck with it.

 

[JAT]

Kind of a funny end to things, maybe I'll try driving my computers around when they crash next time.

Happy to hear everything worked out alright!

That works with children. Why not with computers?