My Super Mac G4 randomly froze and will not reboot properly

[machappyg4]

I have customized a G4 somewhat from scratch, I recently installed 2 gigs of ram and it was working fine and fast and earlier today my mac froze leaving a kick beat playing on my speakers. When I manually rebooted my mac it would start with a grey screen. (does not always boot up with a grey screen, sometimes nothing is displayed) Once my mac logged in properly and told me that the time was set to before march 24 2001 and my mac froze again without the kicking sound. But it still won't boot properly and I have tried reseting the pram already. I have leopard by the way.
Hope you can help

 

[awmazz]

It could be any number of problems including the motherboard or graphics card or even just a dead PRAM battery, but the coincidence between installing the new two GBs and your problems starting makes me guess you got bad RAM.

On the other hand, I also got the kick beat whenever my Mac Mini froze from overheating. I now stand it on its side for better cooling and no problems any more. So maybe the stock fans/cooling aren't keeping up with your mods.

I'd try changing the battery first though as it's easiest to do and rule out as the cause.

 

[camomac]

i would try pulling the ram out and reinserting them in the same order. reboot. if it does the same thing then:

remove one stick at a time and reboot. this will help eliminated if you have a bad stick.

if say you remove one and leave the others and everything is fine, then remove the next one in line and replace it with the suspected bad piece. if you get the same freeze on boot up you can reasonably say that that stick is bad.

if it boots up fine with the one (you suspect might be bad) then you might have another problem, such as motherboard, or video.

try reseating the video card also, it might have gotten bumped when you put in the ram. actually you should try that first.

i hope this helps some...


let us know what happens.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

Is this the MDD model? The one with the shiny doors on it? It sounds like it can be your power supply starting to go bad. If that's the cause, it's going to be a $100+ part to replace, you can always sell off your "faulty" one for a good chunk of change too since there are people out there that refurbish them.

The MDD typically had problems with the PSU anyways so that may be the cause.

But like others have said, it could very well just be the memory or something else like your PRAM battery which is a 1/2 size AA. If your time was resetted, it could mean either your battery or PSU.