Help with "sucking" iMac G5

[ricgnzlzcr]

Hi everyone,

I have an iMac G5 1.8 gigahertz and 512 megs of ram. Well this computer had been turned off for about a week till I turned it on yesterday to watch a movie from an external harddrive. After the movie ended I didn't touch it and the screen tourned off because it went to sleep. When I tried to wake it up it had the beachball of death and wouldnt go off a black screen. I turned it off by holding the power button and turned it back on and then it made this "sucking" sound like when a baby sucks on a bottle. The screen won't go past the initial sound of reboot and just sticks on a gray screen making that disastrous sucking sound. Any help please? Thank you

 

[ricgnzlzcr]

I know that many of you know nothing about this, but if you do please help me. I had a problem with my powerbook awhile back and I was helped out very well here. If anyone has any tip on how to reboot the computer without deleting the harddrive please let me know. Thank you

 

[mkrishnan]

Try holding down Cmd-Option-P-R while turning the power on.

 

[Makosuke]

The sucking sound is probably the fans running full blast, which they will do if the computer crashes and stops controlling them--it turns them all the way up as a safety feature to prevent the computer from overheating, just in case.

What this would mean is that your Mac is freezing on startup at the grey screen. A lot of things can cause this.

You might try booting in safe mode (hold the shift key right after you turn it on) and see if that gets you to the desktop. If not, then you've either got a hardware problem or a corrupt OS install for some reason. Try booting from the hardware check CD that came with it and see if it checks out ok. If so, boot from the software reinstall disc or a Tiger install disc, and assuming that works run Disk Utility on your drive. Hopefully that'll get you running. If not, you could try an archive and install and hope for the best.

 

[ricgnzlzcr]

Hey everyone, thanks for the replies. I have to correct myself, there is no sucking sound as much as it is loud clicking inside the computer. It is about 10 consecutive clicks, then it whirls for 2 seconds, and then the 10 clicks start again. I tried doing the option-command-p-r and the computer just rebooted and the same thing happened. Then I held shift and the clicks stopped. After a minute or so, there is this folder in the middle with the finder logo flashing and then a question mark flashing. What should I do here and does anyone know what's happening? Thanks guys you're lots of help!

 

[Makosuke]

Ok, that's completely different.

It sounds an awful lot like the sound you're hearing is your hard drive spinning up, then rattling around a bit trying to read someting, then repeating the process. The computer eventually gives up and you get the "unable to boot" icon.

If this is what the sound is, your hard drive has probably died--sadly, they do that--and everything on it is more than likely gone. Have you tried starting up from the hardware check disc included with the computer yet? It would confirm this.

The other thing that sound might be is a CD that's doing the same--spinning up, looking for data, failing, and repeating. Do you know if there's a disc in the optical drive? If so, try turning off the computer, then holding down the mouse button and turning it on. Keep holding down the button, and it should eject any disc in the drive.

If there's no disc in the drive, though, you're probably out of luck. Try the hardware check CD and see what you get.