Power Mac G5 :: Won't Boot Past Apple Logo Screen?
Nov 23, 2007
I'm trying to repair a Powermac G5 (dual 2.0, the first model I believe, with a new Radeon 9800 graphics card) that won't boot and I'm having some problems that I can't seem to diagnose.
The machine will boot to the openfirmware prompt or target disc mode and will show the 'OS not found' icon if left to boot from the HD (which has been wiped). If I try to boot from either the included restore disc or a retail 10.4 DVD I've tried it will show the boot screen with the Apple logo on it but no spinning status indicator underneath. It just freezes on that screen. Once it showed the status indicator but it just continued to spin for about 30 mins, at which point I gave up. Same issue if I try to boot the hardware test (except it freezes on the hardware test loading icon rather than the Apple icon). The superdrive appears to work as it is accessible in target disc mode.
I've reset the SMU and reset the PRAM via the keyboard shortcut. The one thing that leads me to think it's a firmware fault is that when I run the 'reset-nvram' command it gives an OK, but when I then run 'reset-all' it freezes rather than rebooting. Any ideas anyone?
This morning, I would turn it on and it'd go to the grey screen with the Apple logo for a few seconds and then go to the icon that is a circle with a line through it. After reading online, I was able to boot it up in Safe Mode. I went to Startup Disk in Preferences. I chose the MAC OS X, xxxx and then clicked the lock to prevent further changes and then clicked restart. Now when I turn on the macbook, it goes to the grey screen with the Apple logo for at least two-three minutes and then just shuts off. Won't boot into Safe Mode now. I already tried the Command-Option-P-R keys trick like five times.
I have a 1.83 Ghz MBP with 512 mb of RAM (lame I know). The other day someone was using my computer to burn a CD on iTunes when all of my programs began failing. On instinct I rebooted my computer to solve the problem. Alas, now I cant boot past the grey apple screen, and the gear is spinning away. Saddest part of the story is that I had time set aside to back up my computer the day after this happened . Anyway what is the best thing to do from here? I haven't made any moves to fix it yet really, so what is the best thing that I can do to try and get my files back?
Information: MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.10) Grey Screen, Spinning Gear
My mid 2010 iMac i7 will not boot past the apple logo? I'm running 10.7.3. I have tried restoring from TM backup from recovery mode (worked the last time this happened) however upon completion it returns to the recovery screen? I made a disk of Lion when I downloaded the first time (followed same instructions sourced from numerous websites) which does not seem to work when i set to start up from this disk, just gets to the grey screen and flicks between the apple logo, a folder icon with a question mark and the circle with line through? Now I can't eject the disk either, a message appears that system can't eject and to make sure all applications are closed? Not sure how to go about closing these applications without being able to start the system? When I tried booting from the Macintosh HD I got a message that the boot cache partition was faulty? I have ran disk permissions etc all ok. Â
there back in September when I got my macbook I had the problem where it wouldn't boot past the apple logo screen and it was taken away and the hard drive had to be replaced and now it has happened again! I'm so annoyed as Im getting really close to exams at Uni so need my computer but will it need to have the hard drive replaced again!? As well with it being Lion I dont have a disk with it to try utility disk.
My mother's unibody white MacBook will not get past the grey apple and spinning gear when you first boot up the computer. This was after she opened a link in an email from a friend who had her email compromised. Now I'm getting spam emails with the same link from my mother's hacked email, and her computer won't even get to the login screen. I took it to the genius bar only to be told it was likely HD failure, but the windows partition works without a hitch! What could this be? A trojan? Is there any way to retrieve data (really just pictures) before I attempt to reinstall OS X?
Reset my disc permission is Disk utility ...like the idiot i am, and now My MBA won't boot past the Apple logo and spinning cog. In Single User Mode the key problem seems to be. sudo: /private/etc/sudoers is mode 0666, should be 0440 :/ root# sendmail: warnibg: valid_hostname: empty hostname sendmail: fatal: unable to use my own hostname / is it possible to repair permissions in Single User mode?
My computer died last night with each application not responding. I couldn't shut down normally so I held the power button to turn it off.Â
Next morning, I tried to boot the MacBook Pro and the boot process stalled at the grey screen with the Apple Logo and spinning wheel. I let it go for an hour and there was no change on the screen. Based on Apple's desk I ran Hardware diagnostics (extended with looping disabled) and got the following errorÂ
4HDD/11/40000000: SATA (0,0) Â
The screen shot is belowÂ
I ran this again with standard testing (no looping) and standard with looping and all gave the same results.Â
Info: MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
My Macbook Pro is not starting past the grey screen and the apple logo and the rolling circle. I have tried every method and I am desperate to do anything to start my computer even erase the entire disc. I have contacted the Apple store and they told me the cost will be equivalent to $600 to just repair it and no way I will be able to afford it. I am willing to do anything and even erase my entire disc. However, for that the instructions on the Apple page state that 'Insert your Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5 installation disc'. However, I do not have my installation disc Is there any other way I can erase the OS system and at least reboot my Macbook?
I have a mirror door g4 power pc that had been having some issues with not turning on, and after testing the power supply, it failed miserably. We placed a refurbished power supply in it from a company in New York and the computer was working wonderfully. I went on a cruise last week and went to turn the computer on for the first time in a week and a few days. The CPU turns on, the unit chimes, the fan turns on and the computer starts to boot up, but it won't boot past the gray apple logo screen. Actually, the first few attempts to boot it resulted in a blue screen with gaint apple logo and spinner; it wouldn't advance further. After several restarts and resets, I got it to come up into the normal gray screen. On several attempts it wouldn't boot further than this. On two occasions now though, it has moved past the gray screen to normal operation (it takes about an hour for it to get to that point though) but with some kind of errors. I get the side bar, but the gray panel on to with "file" ect is gone and my HD icon never comes up. The icons on the sidebar do not respond when clicked. The computer will not boot from the OS X disc.Â
I have an iBook G4 1.07 GHz 30 gb 256 RAM with Panther. It was working fine until my HD got close to being full. Now I can't get it to boot past the Apple screen. It will either freeze there, or move on to the blue screen and freeze before the progress bar enters. I want to re-install Panther but I can't get any CD to boot during startup by holding "C", including the Panther OS CD, the Hardware Test CD, or the Tech Tool CD. I am able to boot to single user mode, where I type fsck -fy, and I recieve no errors with the hardware. I had this issue beore and my HD had to be replaced by Apple.
When I turn on my computer, the wheel keeps spinning and stops on the grey apple screen. If I leave it there for a few minutes, the fan gets really loud.
I tried pressing Apple, Option, P, R, but it only chimes once.
I also tried holding down shift and restarting.
And I tried holding down option and restarting.
I even tried to take out the memory and put it back in.
Nothing is working.
I have the startup disks, but I don't know how to put them in the cd drive.
Since the computer won't boot up, I can't open the tray.
I started this topic on the Garage Band forum because I was having trouble with Garage Band '08 when my computer crashed and will not restart afterwards. Garage Band was crashing 2 out of every 3 attempts at recording, and I would have to use Force Quit to escape and start over. Then, while I was in the middle of a very complex project involving Garage Band, iTunes, Finale (music notation program), and Microsoft Word, the computer froze up and I hit restart, thinking that would solve the problem. Big mistake - the computer has not been able to restart since then. I have a late 2005 G5 power mac with 1 GB of memory, 230 GB hard drive (or something like that) and no additional gizmos installed, running OS X 10.4.4. I had upgraded to iLife '08 a month or so ago and have had problems since with unusual crashes and freezes, especially involving Garage Band '08.
When I boot, I get to the gray opening screen with the gray apple logo and the spinning gear (is it really called an "intergalactic frisbee?"), and no further. The fans come on (and begin to ramp up to a huge noise after two minutes or so), the white LED light comes on steadily. I've disconnected all peripherals except my keyboard and mouse (Kensington USB keyboard and Logitech Mouse, both of which seem to work OK still). I can use the keyboard to open the CD/DVD player, and I can start the computer with both the Apple Installer disk and with Disk Warrior 4.0. I've repaired everything I can find with both programs, verified everything available, used Disk Warrior to examine corrupted files, and removed all the .plist files that it said were broken and could not be fixed. The only thing I can't find is that it says I am missing a "tmp" folder in my HD/private/ folder, which I can't seem to locate on the directory on Disk Warrior. Both programs say that all my hardware is fine, and that everything else is OK too. Puzzling. I removed the battery and tested it (it was OK), replaced it, and reset the PMU button on the motherboard even though I know all you have to do is unplug the back for a few minutes or so.............
I'm in way over my head after promising to fix my father in laws power mac g5. When I press the power button everything seem normal. You hear the apple sound but after a short while the fans speed up the screen turns grey with a folder icon and a flashing question mark and then the apple logo appears. I have never been past this stage. I have paired the memory installed correctly and I have tried every memory combination possible. I have reset the Pmu and I have reset the pram. I also tried to remove the battery but that didn't help either. I also tried to boot from a system disc but nothing I hear the disc spinning but nothing happens.
I have one of the old blue PowerMac G3 computers, and I kept getting a kernel panic, so I reset the RAM and now when I start up the computer, it stops at the apple screen without even spinning. I've tried booting it in single user mode, and for some reason it doesn't make a difference what keys I hit while turning on the computer. It still boots to the apple screen.
I recently required a Power Mac G4, and it was working fine, albeit a bit slow but I just assume that was because there's too many files on it, but that's another story. I shut it down before I left work, when I came back in the morning it was just the grey screen with the apple. I reset it, still no response. I reset the PRAM, nothing. I tried to boot in Single user mode, nothing. I tried to boot in verbose mode, nothing. I force ejected the CD and put in an OSX disk one from my laptop, asked it to force read by restarting and pressing "C" and still nothing. I am not sure if a cable inside has been jarred lose.
I have just finished moving my G4 Sawtooth from one house to another. I shut down my machine properly at the one house carefully moved everything over and re-attached the peripherals. Fired up the machine and was greeted promptly with the Apple boot screen and spinning thingy. Then it spun and spun and continued to spin some more. After about 10-15 minutes my desktop backgrounds appeared on the dual monitors, but then sat there like that and no finder ever appeared. After waiting about another 5 minutes, I shut off the machine by holding down the power button. I waited about 10 seconds and powered it on again. Same thing, but this time it just sits at the grey Apple boot screen with the thingy spinning forever. Then I noticed something unusual.
I could hear one, or both of the internal hard drives park the heads and spin down like it was going to sleep. I hadn't noticed that before, but presume it was doing it all along. Meanwhile the computer kept spinning away on the boot screen. I thought, great my drive has crashed and burned. So I removed it and attempted to mount it on my G5 using an external ATA-USB adapter. It mounted without a problem and I was able to see and copy all of the files. So then, I took a spare drive I had with a valid bootable OSX Leopard install and put it into the G4. Fired it up and lo and behold, the same problem. The drive spins up, the machine shows the apple boot screen and keeps spinning the thingy, then after a bit of time the drive parks the head and spins back down. I'm stumped and would like some assistance in resolving this problem. Any suggestions? Oh, and yes, I've tried reseating all cards and memory and disconnected all peripherals.
I am having a major problem with my MacBook Pro and it just wont boot past the apple loading screen at all I have tryed al lot of ways to fix this and it just wont work It does not go into safe mode, it does not boot from cd, the PRAM thing wont work, verbose mode or the comand + s mode wont work I tryed clean install but it wont boot from dvd, also it will not boot in any other way It was working perfectly last night and i just shut it down and it does not work know. Â
My friend was also trying to install Lion from his account but the .dmg for it did not open so we quit and that night i used it for my essay and finished and then i turned it off and next day in the morning it don't workÂ
I have Time Capsule and everything is backed up on there. My data is on a separate USB HD + Drobo, but for now I need my iMac to boot but it won't. It won't even get into the Desktop. all the guides online says double click the Install Icon this and that...I would if I can get into the Desktop !
It is just stuck on the Apple Logo screen with the spinny thing, that stops spinning!
Sometimes, when I turn on my iMac (10.6.2), the system will not load, you can see the grey screen but empty, no apple logo there. I have to force a shutdown pressing the power button and when I turn it on for the second time it will work properly.
It only happens once in a while but I cannot understand why, since nothing changes.
PS.- I have verified my disk with the disk utility and everything seems fine.
My power mac g5 has suddenly started to shut itself down in the early stages of boot up. The apple logo appears and the spinning timer logo spins befor a complete shut down.Â
I have used my o/s disc to access the disk utility. Repair disc is not an option. Verify disc is an option but this process fails due to " invalid nodes" Â
Info: iPad 2, Mac OS X (10.5.8), G5 PPC 1.8ghz, iPhone4
With regular startup I get the flashing question mark and can hear the failed hard drive click and spin. After getting the DVD to boot in the drive (it doesn't suck it in right away), I get an apple logo and pinwheel like I should, but after about 30 seconds it goes to a black (blank) screen and the DVD spins down, but not all the way. The computer is still on, but nothing happens.
Oddities:
<>If I start it with an iMac 10.4 DVD I can boot to the install screen just fine, but can't install because it's an iMac DVD. I can erase and partition the drive fine (not the dead one, another one I have).
<>Safe mode boot does the same thing, but takes 20 times as long to boot
<>Retail OSX 10.4 DVD does not boot at all, but that one might be for PowerPC computers. I get the flashing question mark folder.
I had been using my iMac all night, when all of a sudden the bouncing beach ball appeared and everything became unresponsive, apart from the mouse cursor itself. It might be worth noting that a few hours prior to this, I plugged in an external hard drive to burn off a DVD. This external hard drive has two partitions, the first being a restored image of Leopard; and the second, my out of date backup ("yes, I know").
I subsequently restarted my machine, enjoyed the chime, pondered the excessively long start up and looked bemused at the Leopard Setup wizard. I realised that the restored Leopard partition had booted up instead of the internal disc. So, I unplugged the external drive, pressed reset on the iMac and was immediately greeted first by the reassuring chime, then by the Apple logo and a lingering grey screen and finally by a flashing dark folder icon with a question mark in the centre for eternity.
I tried rebooting a few more times. Same. I've been frantically Googling but only found the PRAM reset and a very frightening iMac disassembly guide. I've tried plugging the external drive back it, but it refuses to boot Leopard from that now. What can I do? I feel so helpless on a Mac, on a PC I'd at least be able to open the sucker up before panicking! I've been working on a client's flash web dev project for months, and not made a back up in about half that time. The website is supposed to be going live tomorrow! Luckily I have the site uploaded, but the entire source code is potentially lost, so in the long term this is a major catastrophe!
So, today I tried to install windows through boot camp assistant on my mac. When it got to partitioning my drive I got an error that my hard drive needed repairing. So I opened up disk utility and clicked verify disk (I can't click repair) and got this error Disk Utility stopped verifying �Chris Hard Drive� because the following error was encountered: Filesystem verify or repair failed. I then researched this and learned to fix the problem I must boot from my leopard install disk and use the DU from their. Unfortunately I don't have access to the disk. But I have the install disk from my old macbook (the white one) so I used this. I put in the disk and shut down. When I turn it on I hold C but all I get is a grey screen but with out the apple logo. When I try turning it out holding alt I don't get the option of the CD just Chris Hard Drive. But when I boot up holding D i do get to the hardware test screen but I get the error that's something like "Hardware test does not support this hardware". Will the Leopard install of a different type of macbook not work on my new macbook pro (13" aluminium)?
My MacBook Pro will not boot up any more. It just suddenly happened. It turns on and comes up to the gray screen with the apple logo and then the circle progress icon comes up and spins.
I own an iBook G4. I could not get it to boot up, it would just go to a grey screen with the apple symbol and a timer/clock that looked like a gear.FYI: I may provide more information than necessary in the text below. I'm not sure what is and isn't relevant.
Following some advice I found in this forum I got out my old OS disks to boot from the disc instead of the hard drive. I intended to archive the old hard drive and install my latest OS (10.4.6 on the disc, 10.4.11 was the version I had been running on the machine, I believe). The machine told me it needed 4.5 Gb to install 10.4.6 Tiger, but I only had 4.0 Gb left on the hard drive. So instead, I archived and installed with the OS that came with the computer originally, 10.3.4.
I got things going, did the archive and install, and got to the log in screen. Unfortunately, I could not remember the password, so I booted up in single user mode, and entered the following to get into the machine:
1. mount -uw / 2. rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone 3. shutdown -h now
This got me in with a new admin login, and I started up in 10.3.4. I soon noticed that I could still see all of the files that I put on the hard drive on my old operating system. I thought I shouldn't be able to see them, but since I could I decided to try to copy them to an external hard drive. When I did, I got an error message saying that there was a read/write error. I was not entirely surprised, but I decided it was time to turn back to the forums for help.
What I want to do is copy everything from my old hard drive onto an external hard drive, make room on the iBook hard drive to reinstall my latest operating system (10.4.6). Once I've done that I'd like to get the essential files back onto the iBook from the external hard drive and continue using my computer (even though it is a dinosaur).
My macbook is driving me insane now. Just recently, my macbook has occasionally flickering screen and freezes after that. Yesterday, when I was watching youtube on fullscreen, it first has flickering screen, then freezes. So I hard booted it pressing the power button. Then, when I try to restart it, it won't boot pass the apple logo no matter what. Here's my macbook spec2007 Summer Macbook Pro 15"Snow Leopard 10.6 OS XI cracked my screen once, and got a replacement, don't know if that matters.
I've tried the following:Safe mood reboot, the progress bar goes about half, then disappears and stalls again.Booted in verbose mode but it gives a warning message: 'com.apple.driver. internal modem support declares no kernel dependencies; using com.apple.kernal.6.0'. Booted in Single user mood, and typed fsck for disk repair. After checking said the volume Macintosh HD appears to be ok. But still won't boot pass the apple logo after restart.Boot with installation disk pressing C at startup.
Success after a few try: Opened Disk Utility and did disk repair (no problem found). Reinstalled Snow Leopard OS X 10.6. This time it booted with Finder and everything for a short while, then the screen flicker and freezes again (before I can backup anything!). Then, I can't reboot pass the apple logo again. When I try to reinstall Leopard OS X 10.5 with installation disk, the macbook seems to try to read the disk, but won't boot. I've got a CD stuck in the optical drive now.
