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philmo

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 16, 2005
45
0
A couple of days ago I started having serious problems with my PowerMac G4.

The first thing that happened was that it sort of froze. The clock kept ticking, and I could move the mouse, but all apps gave a spinning beachball of death.

So I did a hard restart.

When the machine booted again, the clock was set to December 1969, which it gave me a warning about, and I set it to the correct time. I figured my battery is dead. More troubling was the fact that I couldn't connect (via wired ethernet) to my network. In fact, the light on the router that shows a physical link with a machine didn't light up.

Since then I've zapped the PRAM and rebooted a few times. I believe one of these times the clock change stuck, but the rest of the time it went back to 1969.

It also was taking a loooooong time to boot, I would guess 5 minutes. It spent a long time on an empty blue screen.

I just tried installing an ethernet PCI card, thinking that my battery and my ethernet port might have both died at the same time somehow, but now I have a new problem. Before Finder was done starting up, the machine just powered off all of a sudden. After that I couldn't get it to boot at all. I'd press the power button and the light would flicker but it would just die again instantly. I let it sit for about an hour and tried again. It spent a minute or so trying to boot and then powered off again. Now I'm having the same problems starting it up.

Any ideas?
 
You think the backup battery may be dead? Well, did you replace it? The clock being out would be your first hint.
That would be the first thing to do. Then reset the power management button on the motherboard before you restart with the new battery installed. You should be good to go.
 
The clock was my first clue, but I haven't had a chance to go buy a new battery yet. And I didn't think that the battery would affect my ethernet like that...
 
You wouldn't think that the PRAM battery would affect the entire motherboard like it does.

I had exactly the same problems you are experiencing all the way down to the networking problems. I replaced the PRAM battery and all is well!

I hadn't replaced the battery since I bought it in 2000 so it was time! If it has been more than 3 years, I would say give it a shot, I bet it takes care of your problems.

The best part is that they are relatively cheap no more than $15 at radio shack, or cheaper at OWC.

Report back with how it goes
 
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