Hi,
I look after a network of 50 eMacs (G4 1.42Ghz, 768MB, 80GB, 10.4.8) in a high school. We have a problem that is very wierd. It happened all of 2006 and now its beginning again in 2007. It is a very random boot problem where (only) SOMETIMES an eMac when turned back on after a shutdown (mostly always awake or in sleep mode, except when someone actually selects shutdown rather than logoff) will get to the grey apple boot logo and either: hang before the spinner appears...or...the spinner appears and just spins indefinatly.
This is very random. Most of the time, when a machine is shut down, it will startup fine, but on random occasions, any one (or two, or three) of our 50 emacs will get this problem. It takes at least two or three forced power offs (either holding the button, or out of frustration....yanking the cord), or a netboot to get the eMac running again. Usually, after its begins working again, it can go for months before doing it again. Some other machines do it on a weekly basis, but most are completely random. There is no pattern to it.....its just wierd. Its also almost impossible to replicate the situation.
Things we have tried include resetting PRAM, running hardware test, formatting the disk, creating a completely fresh disk image to deploy. Our head tech has run out of ideas!
If anybody has any ideas...any at all....I would very much appreciate it if you could share them with me.
P.S. (if important).... they are all setup on a 10/100 ethernet network and authenticate via LDAP on Mac OS X Server (Panther) which gets its accounts from a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory. Could network connections (or lack of in the case of the blue cord being unplugged) affect a machines ability to boot?
I look after a network of 50 eMacs (G4 1.42Ghz, 768MB, 80GB, 10.4.8) in a high school. We have a problem that is very wierd. It happened all of 2006 and now its beginning again in 2007. It is a very random boot problem where (only) SOMETIMES an eMac when turned back on after a shutdown (mostly always awake or in sleep mode, except when someone actually selects shutdown rather than logoff) will get to the grey apple boot logo and either: hang before the spinner appears...or...the spinner appears and just spins indefinatly.
This is very random. Most of the time, when a machine is shut down, it will startup fine, but on random occasions, any one (or two, or three) of our 50 emacs will get this problem. It takes at least two or three forced power offs (either holding the button, or out of frustration....yanking the cord), or a netboot to get the eMac running again. Usually, after its begins working again, it can go for months before doing it again. Some other machines do it on a weekly basis, but most are completely random. There is no pattern to it.....its just wierd. Its also almost impossible to replicate the situation.
Things we have tried include resetting PRAM, running hardware test, formatting the disk, creating a completely fresh disk image to deploy. Our head tech has run out of ideas!
If anybody has any ideas...any at all....I would very much appreciate it if you could share them with me.
P.S. (if important).... they are all setup on a 10/100 ethernet network and authenticate via LDAP on Mac OS X Server (Panther) which gets its accounts from a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory. Could network connections (or lack of in the case of the blue cord being unplugged) affect a machines ability to boot?