My Mac Thinks It's Running ME

[Keljeck]

Hi, I'm a longtime reader, had a problem and decided to join up. I'll probably stick around rather than just joining for this opprotunity.

Anyway, I've been having a problem with my mac lately and so far nothing has helped. The problem is that I keep on getting the restart screen whenever it boots up (or even before it boots up). Occasionally it'll boot into open firmware, or it will make noises like it's booting up but keep the screen blank. If that fails it is fine with simply taunting me by going to the restart screen again.

I called AppleCare and I was told that it was an issue with the energy or whatever (told me to press PR command and control so I got a second chime, if that explains what I was told) but that didn't fix it. Then I reinstalled OS X, but that didn't fix it. Finally I sent it in to get repaired and they gave it back to me with a cleaner screen and a new logic board... and it just started crapping out again.

Any idea what else could be causing repeated restarts?

 

[amoda]

Try reseating the ram and check the harddrive. A good program to do that is called OnyX. If it continues to happen call applecare again asap.

Link to OnyX download

 

[MacsRgr8]

Do you mean you keep getting kernel panics?

First of al try resetting the Open Firmware:
(Re)boot while pressing and holding <COMMAND> <OPTION> <O> <F>.
You should see a grey screen with black letters, and a prompt.

Tyoe the following:
reset-nvram <ENTER>
set-defaults <ENTER>
reset-all <ENTER>

Your Mac should reboot now.

If you have done this, and have already performed a clean Mac OS X install, then maybe you have faulty RAM, or maybe a bad HD.
Any chance of removing some RAM, and booting off another HD to try to isolate the problem?

 

[Reflow]

Hi, I'm a longtime reader, had a problem and decided to join up. I'll probably stick around rather than just joining for this opprotunity.

Anyway, I've been having a problem with my mac lately and so far nothing has helped. The problem is that I keep on getting the restart screen whenever it boots up (or even before it boots up). Occasionally it'll boot into open firmware, or it will make noises like it's booting up but keep the screen blank. If that fails it is fine with simply taunting me by going to the restart screen again.

I called AppleCare and I was told that it was an issue with the energy or whatever (told me to press PR command and control so I got a second chime, if that explains what I was told) but that didn't fix it. Then I reinstalled OS X, but that didn't fix it. Finally I sent it in to get repaired and they gave it back to me with a cleaner screen and a new logic board... and it just started crapping out again.

Any idea what else could be causing repeated restarts?

What machine do you have? If you tell us maybe we can help you more..

 

[Keljeck]

What machine do you have? If you tell us maybe we can help you more..

Ooops, sorry. It's an iBook G4.

And yeah, they're kernel panics, I'll try the reboot in open firmware and see if that helps. That seems easiest right now. At this point it's telling me to reboot before I can do anything, but I don't think it'll make me reboot out of open firmware.