I have a lovely secondhand 12 inch Powerbook G4. It won't boot but will just chime and go to a grey screen. I can't boot to safe mode but I can get into Open Firmware I have reset PRAM and the power manager. I don't have the install CD but I borrowed one from a friend with the same model and it wouldn't boot from that.
I recently reinstalled a clean Tiger on my old MDD G4 with the intent on giving it to a friend of mine in Oregon. Everything was smooth here in Los Angeles. Got the OS on and running sweet... 10.4.11 combo update... all's well.
I drive up to Oregon, set it up in his office using his old CRT monitor and power it on. It chimes and manages to find the Tech Tool eDrive recovery partition, but not the OS on the boot drive. Then, seconds later, screen of death/kernel panic and no boots or startup chimes thereafter.
Steps I've taken: I have reset the PMU I have removed all peripherals, including viddy, SATA adapter and all but on stick of RAM Tried every stick of RAM by itself No startup chime -- just a fan for a few seconds then a super fan kicks in... no signal to monitor at all.
Strange symptom: at times power was making it to the drives, and other times not. (determined by me putting my hand on the drive to feel its vibration or lack thereof during boot).
Do I need a new PSU? And if so where to buy?
------------------------------ Dual 867 MDD G4 SATA adapter/w 300GB Tiger boot drive and 200GB data drive (w/ Panther still installed) 120GB data drive on IDE 66 bus w/Tech Tool recovery / restore partition ------------------------------
Late last night, I ran into some problems with my iBook G3. It's the 700 Mhz model, with 384MB of RAM. Nothing else special in terms of hardware config (unless an Airport card is special). OS X 10.2.8.
Basically, the computer seemed to hang and I did a hard reboot, and upon starting up I got a folder with a flashing ? .
I can't seem to find my Install disc 1 to run Disk Utility or just boot up - hopefully I will find that when I go home tonight (or maybe I left it at my parent's place), but I checked using the Hardware Test CD and it didn't detect any problems.
I am having problems opening the CD drive, so I've had to open it using a paperclip. Sometimes it doesn't appear to be using the CD.
I also have run the Micromat test CD that came with Applecare (of course this machine is almost 4 years old so that's finished...) and it detected a problem with the Read Buffer last night, but then I guess the battery ran out while it was on the last test.
This morning, I ran the Read Buffer, Write Buffer, and Volume structure tests and the first two passed very fast (unlike last night), but the Volume Structure test failed. I'm not surprised since I've been aware I have issues with this before. I tried to repair before going to work but at one point it seemed to hang so I gave it another hard reboot.
Last night, I would sometimes get the apple logo with the spinning "clock", and sometimes I would get the ? but it would never get to the login screen.
So I was just there, using my computer, doing nothing out-of-the-ordinary. I decided to open up a program (Yahoo! Instant Messenger, I think it was) and the computer went nuts. I completely froze...nothing I tried worked. So I shut the computer down and tried rebooting it. It chimed and went to the white start-up screen with the apple...I let it sit for about ten minutes to let it restart. Still the white screen. I shut it down and tried it again. Same thing.
Is my computer dead? What might I be able to do to fix it? How much might it cost?
I have a mid-07 Santa Rosa MBP. When I turn it on, nothing comes on the screen (not even backlight), but I'll hear the startup chime and 2 seconds later, it reboots and does the same thing. Here is what I have tried:
1. Reset SMU 2. Reset PRAM 3. Replacing HD 4. Replacing PRAM/CMOS battery 5. Tried booting off DVD (but it reboots too fast after the chime)
My mini "starts" without chime when I press the power button on the back. The fan starts, the light in front goes on and I hear some clicks which could be the hard drive. The screen remains black (no signal) and the mini does not respond to the USB keyboard power button. It does not start when pressing it and will not power down if I press it for any length of time when it is on. Pressing the power button on the back for some time shuts it down.
I am having a problem getting my G5 to boot. Half the time when I turn it on I get no chime. The other half, I get the chime but the boot process does not continue. If I leave the computer on the fans begin to progressively get faster and louder after about 5 minutes. I've tried starting with various USB and Firewire components unplugged and have even gone to just a keyboard and mouse. No change. Can I get the computer to boot from an OSX CD? How do I open the tray? etc.
Information: Powermac G5 Dual 2.5GHz Mac OS X (10.4.7)
Although this isn't a very important problem, I have noticed on my early 2K8 Mac Pro the Boot POST chime will not play through external speakers. Is there a way to enable this, as it is awfully tinny from the internal speaker.
I acquired an iMac G4 PowerPC with a 20" flat panel. System powers up but does not boot displays Apple logo screen and busy indicator. I have tried various commands safe-boot and it does not seem to work screen never changes. No Apple chime on start-up.
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.3.x), System will not boot and no disks
Ive got a G4 Power Mac 2x500MHz that Im getting a bit frustrated with.
Situation: - Power supply seems to work as power flows once I hit the power button. Fans spin, red light comes on the board, connected drives spin up, drawers open. - No chime. At first it was sporadic, but now non-existent. - No video output. Has the original AGP ATI 128 Rage Pro graphics card. - No power to USB ports? Try plugging in devices that light up in USB but nothing happens.
What Ive tried: - Ive replaced the board with a known good board and get the same results, and of course i thought this was the main problem. I did get a tiny whiff of burning smell from the previous board, though no signs of physical defect on it. No smell from the new board. - Replaced and swapped around about 6 different ram sticks. - Tried PCI graphics card (probably not compatible though) and no results, as expected. - Reset PMU of course. - Swapped processors.
A friend gave me one of these, said he didn't test it. i tested it but have observed the following: ring on PSU plug illuminates fine, was orange but now greed thus battery charges ok. battery button works too, pressing that initially showed 1 dot, now shows 4. charge ok and accepted. pressing the power button though, i hear the fan spin for 1 sec, the disk and the cd drive click in, but no chime and nothing on the display. no response nothing, a hard reset (hold power) turns it off. I did the PMU reset, and the pmu did do a reset, but nothing. I also did the PRAM, and again nothing. I am suspecting a faulty logic board, I hope i can get this going as aesthetically it's in good condition. For the info it appears to be an iBook G3 model A1007, If you need any more info then give me a shout.
The sound on my 17" G4 Powerbook does not seem to be working any longer. I know there are some similar threads but I think my problem is slightly different because I get sound on startup (the startup chime) then when Leopard loads it seems to be dead.
When I press the volume keys (F4/F5) I see the volume indicator increase/decrease but I do not hear an alert sound.
When I go into System Preferences/Sound, "Internal Speakers" is grayed out under "Sound effects" but "Internal Speakers" shows up under the Output tab.
When I plug in headphones, I get no sound.
I've tried resetting the PRAM and open firmware.
I've tried creating a new user and the new user also has no sound.
I've tried repairing permissions, running disk warrior while booted from another drive, and a disk repair in disk utility, as well as fsck-fy and also clearing the cache files with applejack.
I am runnign Leopard on this machine, version 10.5.6.
I though it was a fried/disconnected sound card or a logic board issue until I realized that the startup chime was playing just fine.
Also, whenever I press the volume keys, I get the following error in system.log
I have a 17" G4 1Ghz iMac, we used it until 10 months ago when I got my new 24" Intel 2GHz machine. That new 24" iMac is now in the basement craftroom as the digital hub for pictures/video/etc., while I brought the 17" G4 1Ghz iMac out from my closet for the upstairs loft general web surfing machine. It worked for 2 days and upon shut down would not re-start. I could only hear the fan and nothing else. If I held the power button for 10 seconds upon trying to start up there was a chime that sounded for a few seconds. Once the fan is making small sound, nothing else, if I hold power button for 5-20 seconds the computer will shut down (fan turn off).
Did some online checking, found article on PMU, so I did try and re-set PMU via the apple support article.Resetting the iMac (Flat Panel) Power Management Unit (PMU). Still, no re-start. It was running the latest 10.4.x update upon being put away for 10 months. Here is a picture of the bottom, the red light is on upon trying power on, my finger is on the PMU reset button. Is there any other diagnostic thing I can do? Is there a battery on this logic board that I can check/replace? I'm 100% ok at taking it apart and trying anything to fix it.
It made a loud (very loud) beep, while the screen was grey. The power button flashed in yellow, and then became orange, and then chimed like it usually does, and booted normally.
Now she is using it, it's like if nothing happened.
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.
Got a Powerbook G4 with a "messed up" HD. Couldn't fix it, so got a firewire drive and ran a bunch of utilities from my newer intel iMac. Cloned the Powerbook's drive to a USB hard drive, did all repairs on the USB drive, formatted the Powerbook, cloned the USB drive BACK to the Powerbook, but it just gives me the flashing question mark when I try to boot.
What is REALLY weird is I can boot my iMac FROM THE CLONE ON THE USB DRIVE and it works fine.In Drive Genius the Powerbook drive (in TDM) shows as a single drive, but if I go to "Repartition" then it shows 3 smaller partitions on the drive; I believe they're called "Apple Free Space" or something like that (can't check right now, I'm running Repair on it AGAIN at the moment).
I feel like I'm missing something simple, like the machine just doesn't see one thing that tells it "Oh, yeah! There's an operating system on this drive!" I have tried partitioning from Drive Genius and Disk Utility. Have done clones back and forth with Drive Genius, Disk Utility, and Carbon Copy Cloner. Same results each time.
I can't get OSX to boot on the G3 when I reboot with the C button down it won't do anything no apple logo or anything. It's 10.4 and the cd version What am I doing wrong?
I'm trying to install Damn Small Linux on iMac G3,64MB ram and 333Mhz processor. The problem is that i'm not able to boot the cd. Under windows machine...it boot normally,but if i put it on G3 and hold 'C',it doesn't boot (but i think it try to read the cd becouse i see a small icon with "face"/"?" on the screen).
My PowerBook G4 1.5Ghz won't boot up. It happened about a year ago when I first got my new MBP so I just let it sit. But I'd like to give it to a friend if I can get it to work. I've tried resetting the PMU by holding shift+control+option+power... waiting 5 seconds and powering on, but nothing happens. The battery appears to be functioning correctly. When the cable is in it lights up like normal and the battery indicators light up and are in full charge. I've taken the ram out and put it back in. Any other clues what I could try before bringing it in to Apple?
My trusty ol' powerbook might have finally met its match. I can not get it to boot into any mode. I've tried booting to the original discs ('C' while starting up); safe mode, single user mode, etc. I've reset the PMRAM (or whatever it's called) It seems perma stuck at the blue screen.
My powerbook was working fine but i shut i down over night and when i turned it on the next morning it refused to boot. All i got was a grey screen with the folder icon which flash between a question mark and the finder icon.
I opened up Garageband, went into preferences to configure the audio for my peripheral audio device, and the computer and curser locked up, so I had to shut it down by pressing the power button for 4 seconds. I restarted the G4 and it would only boot up to a blue screen with the pointer curser, but would not finish loading anything on the desktop, no icons, no menu, nothing. I tried restarting repeatedly this way, but got the same result each time.
I was playing some old freeware games for Mac OS 9 and was playing lemmings when my Clamshell iBook just turned off and now I get the Blinking folder with question mark. I made a live CD of ubuntu where it's talking to the harddrive but the iBook won't boot to OS X so i am trying to figure why.
My powerbook G4 keeps freezing whenever I try to start it - as limited as my Mac vocabulary is, the "spinny thing" that goes by during the "gray boot screen" with that there "Apple logo" stops and the entire process is frozen. Paper season is started here at school - and I hate click-clacking on the cheapo Dells in the computer lab.
My friend just got a 800 Mhz iBook G3 from someone. I think it's the April 2003 model. It has a CD-ROM drive so I think it's that one. The iBook has Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger on it. The problem is that in normal boot, it hangs right before the "Starting Mac OS X" screen with the bar. The mouse pointer just stays in the corner. The computer can boot into Safe Boot. He tried reinstalling the OS with Archive And Install keeping the same settings but it still does it. Apparently he says that he had to boot into the Mac OS X Install Disc in safe mode by holding shift. Starting the computer holding Option and selecting the Install Disc caused the installer caused it to hang in the same way. He is currently doing another Archive And Install with the keep settings box unchecked and has yet to do an Erase And Install.
I have a G4 PowerMac that will not boot up. I power up the computer and it stalls on a grey screen with text prompting me to type <<boot>> if you wish to continue...or something like that. Does anyone have any advice on how I might troubleshoot this? The computer was working fine for a few days before this occured. It has been unused and sitting is storage for a while.
my powerbook was playing up yesterday and i had to power off via the switch and now it wont boot, All i get is a grey screen no apple logo and no spinning dial, in stead i get a picture of a happy mac face and then a question mark and sometime not even that.