my mac crashed and wont restart!!

[tomflix52]

yesterday i was on a few differnt programs and i pluged in my ipod to update and my comp crashed, i went to restart and a blank gray screen poped up, then a blue folder witht the mac guy and a question mark poped up and i restarted it a few more times, and now it started to restart and the it poped up "you need to restart your computer, press down the power button for a few seconds" and i did and it did the same thing and i tryed this maybe 10times now, its one of those imacs with all the stuff in the moniter(as you can see i dont know any thing about computers) im 14 so i cant get it fixed by ne one i need to do it myself, i cat tell my dad cause i wasnt supposed to be on it in the first place and i was on bittorent when it broke(please tell me this couldnt havebeen the problem) are there mac viruses aroun? i hadnt updated viryus softwarefor a while. please help me, i can only get on this site from school so ill check back tomarrow



thanks!

 

[Ja Di ksw]

No, it's not from a virus or bittorrent. However, at this point you probably need to just tell your dad. He won't know that bittorrent, so you don't have to mention that if you think it'll really make a difference in his mood, but in all honesty at this point you just need to tell him what happened.

 

[croshtique]

Unplug any things connected to the Mac (except keyboard and mouse) and try again.

If that doesn't work see if you can start up from your Mac OS install CD/DVD and run Disk Utility etc. on your hard drive.

 

[mad jew]

Also, take out any RAM you may have added recently.

Maybe try running fsck too. Good luck.

 

[tomflix52]

but how do i do any of this stuff before i get passed the "you need to restart your computer" page, can i just pop the disk in before i start my computer? this pop up comes up every time

 

[tomflix52]

anyone at all ever have this happen to them????? help please!!!

 

[2nyRiggz]

click on madjew link on fsck. it shows u how to do it.



Bless

 

[cantthinkofone]

I had it happen to my G5 last year. The bottom processor had died. Its working just fine now though. Good luck.

 

[jocool5]

Well here this now. I was at my High School and we have them I mac g5's this smae situation happened. When this happened my teacher told me that it was the HD it's self. I set out to prove him wrong. I zapeds the p-ram and did a hard reboot. It took a while but it worked then finish your job up with the permissions verification in the disk utility and this I mac was good-to-go.
If it is the Hard drive then target disk more wont work but if it is a processor issue it should. Either way you can use a linux live cd to see what is up.