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My iMac 1.8GHz has some serious issues...!

Maxiseller

Maxiseller

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 11, 2005
846
1
Little grey, chilly island.
Firstly, I'm not sure if my problem is hardware or software related, so feel free to move it if needs be.

I am in a bit of a quandry here as I was happily using Dreamweaver earlier today, when *bam* my mac froze. I've been using Macs for three years now, and Ive never, ever known it to just freeze entirely without a kernal panic message or somthing. It was even displaying windows-like characteristics of not redrawing the textures in menus etc for the few seconds I was trying to rush for the apple icon to force quit.

So, I did a hard restart by holding down the power key for three seconds, and the machine restarted. Only, it wouldnt.

What happened was that it stayed on the grey "loading screen" with the picture of the apple logo in the centre. Thats all i got. Figuring I hadn't really got a lot of options from here, I quickly did the firewire target mode to my ibook and copied the most relevant files, and tried to then do a restore/install with the "archive" option, but alas, It still doesn't work - at least properly;

I have managed to actually get into OSX a couple of times since then;

On the first occassion, it loaded everything excatly as I had left it (this is after the archive and install btw) except for the dock which had entirely different icons. It was painfully slow, and seized up after around one minute of use. On reboot, I got the grey screen again.

The second fluke time it managed to get into OSX I had "bluetooth options" screen present itself to me, and upon closing, I tried to run Onyx to do a repair of permissions, and also to delete some of my files like cookies etc - figuring this would help.

Upon restarting, I can not get into OSX at all - and Ive tried everything i can think of; including fsck, hard resets, archive and restore etc...so...help!!!

I'm feeling out of options here! The annoying thing is, this unit isn't very old, and I have a lot of synth music programms and plug ins that demand very, very fussy registration procedures and Its just such a pain to go through it all - I mean we're talking three days to get straight here and I can't take that time off work!!

Any help you guys can give is VERY much appreciated. If I can help you out or give any more information then I will try! What's wrong with my imac??!

P.s. specs: Rev B, 1.8Ghz, 17", 1GB Ram (Third Party but have tried removing)
 
dswoodley said:
Edit - never mind my suggestion.

What was the last software update you made?
Click to expand...

I haven't made any software updates since 10.4.3 so i'm quite up to date, but I heard there were a few probs with the latest upgrade so I didn't install it?

I just find it strange that one second it lets me in, and the next It locks up and won't do anything at all!!
 
Did you try booting into safe mode?

Did the SMART status of drive come out OK?
 
The SMART status of the drive is fine according to all the tests ive been doing (!) but how do I boot into safe mode? Never done that before! (Will that take me past the grey screen?)
 
Here are the Apple directions ...

1. Be sure the computer is shut down.
2. Press the power button.
3. Immediately after you hear the startup tone, press and hold the Shift key.
Tip: The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone but not before.
4. Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple and progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).

What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?

May take longer to boot this way.
 
Well, when it finally made it past the grey screen, it seemed to log in fine (it even recognised that I had a password wheras before it logged straight in) From here though it is painfully slow - I'm talking 10-15 seconds just to open a window to "home".

So, where do I go from here? Is it likely to be something small, or is it something I should have a rant at somebody at apple (as it is within it's 90 day warranty period?)

Incidentally, the fans really do fire up while loading the OS - this is has never been the case before - in fact the imac has actually been noticably quiet in general.
 
You indicate that you have a 1.8 GHz iMac G5 so I'm assuming you
have a revision A.

Those units are having some quite serious problems with the mid plane board
capacitors failing after about 6 months of use.

I would call Apple Care and document your case immediately.

These issues are well published and Apple should be able to help you.
 
FFTT said:
You indicate that you have a 1.8 GHz iMac G5 so I'm assuming you
have a revision A.

Those units are having some quite serious problems with the mid plane board
capacitors failing after about 6 months of use.

I would call Apple Care and document your case immediately.

These issues are well published and Apple should be able to help you.
Click to expand...

I think it's a rev B - the 1.8 Combo - they were 1.6 Rev A's I think. Is this a documented case on the Rev B's too?

I think I will ring Apple tomorrow anyway and see what they say...that will be a fun case of staying on the phone for ohhh....couple of hours!! If anyones got any more suggestions, it would be great! Ill get on them first thing tomorrow morning. Thanks you guys
 
Since it's a new machine, it's not likely a capacitor problem. Those were iMac G5s from awhile ago.

----

Yes, booting in safe mode will be slow.

Means it is likely a corrupted file in the User or root folder.

You may want to create a new user, see if that user is also having problems.
 
Well this morning, with a fresh mind and no caffene swirling around my brain I've taken another look!

I can't see any bulging capacitors at all, but thanks for the link; ill keep my eye out for that.

I can still boot into Safe Mode but I can't log into my "normal mode" account at all - it now just loads my set background and stops there (hey, at least it got further than the grey screen!)

So my question is now about relaibility? Presumably I can go into Safe Mode and create a new user and carry on using it no problem - but is this likely to happen again? You often read that bad hard drives are likely to do the same to you again?

I had an emac for over 18 months without a sniff of a problem - I didn't even have a crash!! So can I rely on this thing now?
 
You likely corrupted a preference file, installed a bad kext/font, etc.

Hard to know exactly what it was from this end.

Basically that user is trashed, but if a new user solves the problem, that's better than a corrupted root folder -- which makes it hard to use any user.
 
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