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Imac G5 won't boot from Disk

R

Riboflavin

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 11, 2010
14
0
Arizona
I received a G5 imac from a friend who asked me to take a look at it and fix it for him because whenever he opens safari the system freezes, same with attempting software update. I'm pretty sure it is permissions issue because when I try and repair permissions via disk utility it locks up as well. I figured I could just boot from my DiskWarrior Dvd and go from there, but when I try and won't boot from the disk. If I hold option and boot, it only shows the hard drive option. Holding C and booting does nothing. The disk works fine on other computers, any ideas?

edit: forgot to mention - it is running 10.5.8
 
Last edited:
option doesn't show this does it?

106482_2.jpg


i ask because thinking firmware password?
 
@tom Nope, shows the hard drive icon to boot from, but no cd icon

@Orange Disk shows up fine on the desktop, lets me read files etc just won't boot :(
 
Was the diskwarrior DVD burned with a Mac? I know sometimes macs don't like bootable CDs burned from windows.

Does it boot other cd/DVD's?

Have you tried bioting a retail install cd and using it's disk permissions?

Does this g5 have liquid cooling? And if so is all the liquid still in the cooling system?

Questions for everyone else- do power Mac g5's suffer from the bad cap problem that the iMacs do? If so could this be causing his problem?
 
Yeah, I burned it using Toast 10 Titanium. I'm not sure about booting from other CD's, I don't really have any others to test.

The only disk he has to give me with it was a copy of Leopard, is this bootable?

I have no idea about liquid cooling, but I doubt it since its an Imac?
 
Oh **** I though it was a power Mac. If it's an I Mac there is a 8 in 10 chance it has leaky caps and that's causing your problems. Yes the leopard DVD should be bootable. Search around on the forms and maybe even google. The leaky cap problem has been discussed a million times and causes problems like what your encountering.
 
Well I got it to boot of the Leopard disk and repaired permissions there, but when I tried to 'verify permissions' it instantly spits back "the underlying task reported failure on exit" and it doesn't seem to have fixed the problem, system still crashes on software update attempt.
 
I guess the problem was with the DiskWarrior disk. I got a new one and it booted and saw the disk this time, however once I select it and it tries to boot it goes to this:

ydAgp.jpg
 
Its a firmware password. If you want to erase it, change the amount of system memory (if its got 2 512MB sticks, take one out). Then reboot it with the different amount of RAM and reset the PRAM 3 times. After that, the password will be gone. I literally just did this on a G5 iMac this week.
 
Hrududu said:
Its a firmware password. If you want to erase it, change the amount of system memory (if its got 2 512MB sticks, take one out). Then reboot it with the different amount of RAM and reset the PRAM 3 times. After that, the password will be gone. I literally just did this on a G5 iMac this week.
Click to expand...
How can you be sure? Wouldn't it ask me for a password at some point? Also, can't you just disable the firmware password or is that really the only way to do it? I don't feel like taking this thing apart.
 
Riboflavin said:
How can you be sure? Wouldn't it ask me for a password at some point? Also, can't you just disable the firmware password or is that really the only way to do it? I don't feel like taking this thing apart.
Click to expand...

think all imac g5s are the same?
mine is 3 screws on the bottom and youre in.
memory on the imac g5 als is on the rhs near the bottom. reset button that i think you might need?? for the PRAM reset is in the middle.
 
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