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iMac G5 won't start up

N

nw43

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 8, 2005
198
0
UK
Hopefully someone will be able to help as I am currently unable to use my iMac (17" G5 Rev B)!!

Last night I was watching EyeTV and it seemed to crash as I couldn't quit, change channels etc and I was just getting the spinning beachball So I switched off using the power button.

Since then it won't start up. It loads the grey apple screen then goes to a blue screen but hangs here and goes no further!!

I've tried restarting several times but this hasn't helped. Also tried resetting PRAM and thought I'd try loading from a disc but I can't do that as there's already a DVD in the drive and I can't get it out.


Any ideas?

Cheers,
N
 
nw43 said:
Hopefully someone will be able to help as I am currently unable to use my iMac (17" G5 Rev B)!!

Last night I was watching EyeTV and it seemed to crash as I couldn't quit, change channels etc and I was just getting the spinning beachball So I switched off using the power button.

Since then it won't start up. It loads the grey apple screen then goes to a blue screen but hangs here and goes no further!!

I've tried restarting several times but this hasn't helped. Also tried resetting PRAM and thought I'd try loading from a disc but I can't do that as there's already a DVD in the drive and I can't get it out.


Any ideas?

Cheers,
N
Click to expand...

You can remove the disc that's currently in the drive by holding down your left mouse button when you start the machine up- that should make it spit it out. After that, try using the various utilities on your OSX disc (hardware tests etc- I'm not sure though- I've never had to use them!)
 
You could try restarting while holding the mouse button down. If you don't get to the point where it ejects the disk, you could try restarting from a backup drive (assuming you back up). Otherwise I think you will have to take it to someone who has an external drive. Good luck.
 
Thanks, I managed to get the disc out by holding down the mouse button.

I booted from the first install DVD and used Disk Utility to repair permissions and the disk. That seemed to comlete fine but when restarting I still just get to the blue screen! :mad:

Oh, I also already tried rebooting in single user mode and using fsck

Anyone know what to try next?
 
G5 machine's are known to have power supply problems including capacitors that were no good. Its possible you may have this. I dont know if you ever go inside but if you do, look to see if you have swelling fat capacitors.
 
Dont Hurt Me said:
G5 machine's are known to have power supply problems including capacitors that were no good. Its possible you may have this. I dont know if you ever go inside but if you do, look to see if you have swelling fat capacitors.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. I had a look inside but there was no sign of any swelling.


This is really annoying now - guess I'm going to have to phone applecare tomorrow to try get this fixed - just glad now that I did take out the extra cover...
 
Dont Hurt Me said:
G5 machine's are known to have power supply problems including capacitors that were no good. Its possible you may have this. I dont know if you ever go inside but if you do, look to see if you have swelling fat capacitors.
Click to expand...

I don't think this was very common on Rev. B's anyway. At least, there are few reports of it.

So the current status is that you have gotten the disc out of the optical drive, and you repaired the hard drive, but you are not able to boot into OS X, is that right? Have you tried booting while holding down the SHIFT key? (This is OS X's "safe" mode.)
 
mkrishnan said:
So the current status is that you have gotten the disc out of the optical drive, and you repaired the hard drive, but you are not able to boot into OS X, is that right?
Click to expand...

Yes, this is right.

mkrishnan said:
Have you tried booting while holding down the SHIFT key? (This is OS X's "safe" mode.)
Click to expand...

I have tried this but couldn't get it to boot successfully. When holding down shift it goes to the grey apple screen with the progress indicator (this is when I should release shift, right?) and stays there for about 5 mins with the system fans now going at full speed. After this it goes to the blue screen (this time with a progress indicator which wasn't there before) and now seems to be stuck on that screen.
 
Unfortunately, I have a habit of suspecting that every iMac G5 problem is like my iMac G5 problem. For me, it was the AirPort/Bluetooth card that went bad, causing a similar problem to what you are having.

When I removed my AirPort card, the problem ceased. It's worth a try, right?
 
mkrishnan said:
Try unplugging the power cable from the back of the iMac (that is, unplug the Mac end, not just the wall end) and wait half a minute, then put it back in. This resets the SMU (see this note). It's one more thing to try.
Click to expand...

Thanks again for your help but this doesn't seem to have made any difference..:(
 
Sorry to bump but does anyone have any further ideas what might be going wrong here?

Is this likely to be a hardware fault?

If I sent it in for repair would I be likely to lose the data on the hard drive - there's some stuff I think on there that I haven't backed up..:mad:

Thanks.
 
igucl said:
Did you try to remove the AirPort card?
Click to expand...

Actually, I haven't tried this. I'm not too sure though how to do it. I looked at this guide but I think that is a rev A as I don't have an Airport card like that? Do you know where I can locate it on a rev B?
 
nw43 said:
Actually, I haven't tried this. I'm not too sure though how to do it. I looked at this guide but I think that is a rev A as I don't have an Airport card like that? Do you know where I can locate it on a rev B?
Click to expand...

Yes, I can help because I did it to my Rev. B. You're right; yours will not look like that. However, yours will be in the same relative spot on your motherboard. It makes it easier to remove the card if you first remove the CD drive, which is really, really simple to remove: undo three philips brass screws, and then pull straight up on the plastic tab. After that, the airport card is held on with two small torx screws (a T6 torx tool does the trick). Once those screws are removed, it lifts up with no effort at all. The only things holding it then are two antenna wires. One is for airport, and the other is for bluetooth. I marked one with a piece of tape and remembered which socket it was plugged into. You may want to do the same, or something similar so that you don't get them mixed up.

For a picture of what the card looks like, see this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/260710/

I think these instructions make it seem more complicated than it really is. If you know how to use a screw driver, you can do this.

Hope that helps.
 
You might have to delete the pref files... Boot in Single user mode (apple+S keys on restart)

Damn I can't find the commands It was a CD MV preference.old sequence


Anyone remember it?

Other wise boot to ext drive.... trash system pref. recover data maybe reinstall

The other thing to do since you pulled off the back is to remove the Battery and press the reset buttons

I'll keep looking for the commands
 
That hasn't worked :( Thank you for trying anyway though.

Going to have a look at the airport card next...............
 
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