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TICKET ARCHIVE -> G5. FUNNY SOUNDS, now NOT BOOTING UP

jgolds - Jan 23, 2007 - 11:27 pm

Hi.
MY G5 out of the blue, made a crazy loud, like airplane landing sound, fans a blasting, then the screen went sort of black, and code came up and an error message. I shut it down quickly. Upon turning back on, it gets to the spinner, then loading OSX , then it say MAC OS X starting, but it stops there. I tried ejecting the DVD tray so I could load Techtool Pro, but I cant eject. Its just frozen. I have no idea what to do. I had put an edrive on the desktop, but that doesnt seem to work either. ANy help would be greatly appreciated. Thnakyou.

mstrroissy - Jan 24, 2007 - 6:15 pm

Hello, I have a power mac G5 Quad that did similar and I had to take it into the Apple store to have it fixed. It turned out to be a faulty logic board (Apple speak for mother board I think). They replaced the logic board and processor under warranty. Is your machine a PowerMac or a iMac g5?

jgolds - Jan 24, 2007 - 6:26 pm

hmmm. It is a power Mac. Gosh I hope its not that. It is no longer under warranty. It's a little over 4 years old. I erased the hard drive, and it seems to be ok now, But I wonder if you're not right. Thanks for responding. I'll keep an eye on it.

mstrroissy - Jan 24, 2007 - 6:55 pm

I am glad you seem to have it licked. Sorry I couldn't be more help. Good luck and Good Job!!!

jgolds - Jan 25, 2007 - 9:50 am

hi again, this is so weird, I dont know., Now all the apps keep closing on their own, it;s just not right. Maybe it is the MOTHAH board? When something like that is not under warranty, about how much does that cost to fix?
Thnaks

jgolds - Jan 25, 2007 - 9:57 am

I am adding to my question again. Is there anything else I can diagnose before I bring it in to a place? Thanks.

mstrroissy - Jan 25, 2007 - 3:22 pm

First, if you are getting the machine up an running, I don't think it's a logic board problem. It could be, but I don't think so, when mine went bad it went, when I tried to start it up all I would get is a momentary red LED behind the front screen and then the fans would go nuts.

First I would go to your system logs apps>utils>console then up in the left corner is a logs icon. click there. To the left you will see a system.log and a console.log, click to highlight each of these and see what they say. There may be an answer to what going on there. If you like cut and paste those here I and can take a look and see if anythings weird. You mentioned that you had tech tool pro, I would try and load it now that the machine is running and to a system scan/test and see what the results are. I am guessing HDD or RAM, but I am not 100% good news is ram and HDDs are MUCH cheaper than the logic board in our G5.

mstrroissy - Jan 26, 2007 - 6:11 pm

I am going to open this up for another tech to look at not sure that I have the answer you need. Thanks and sorry I couldn't be more help.

kellhound1 - Jan 27, 2007 - 1:02 am

Hello,

I have to differ from your previous tech. If the motherboard is indeed the cause it can boot up the machine regardless of its damaged status. The logic board has many components; any one of them could short out but that would not necessarily mean the entire board would stop functioning.

Having said that, a motherboard is a terribly expensive piece of hardware. You'd be better off buying a new machine. If you're lucky you might track down a used board from someone online, but that would end up running you several hundreds of dollars; it wouldn't be farfetched to say it might even cost you close to a thousand dollars for a replacement, which you would then have to have installed--another large fee.

You stated after erasing your hard drive you experienced a period of smooth responses from your computer. Soon afterward the machine started acting up again.

According to this, there might actually be a problem with the hard drive or the hard drive connection in your Mac. That would indeed cause your fans to run at full speed, and your computer to crash. Do you have a second hard drive installed on your computer? If so, you can install the OS onto that drive and see if the computer fares any better. You can even boot the computer from an external FireWire drive if you have one available.

I'm not so sure the problem lies in the RAM. If the RAM was corrupted you would definately not be able to start your computer or even reach the OS. The mere fact that you did after erasing your hard drive suggests the RAM may not be the culprit.

Apple Support offers a few troubleshooting options for similar problems. I'm pasting the URL's here so you can go through the steps:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300552

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238


Hopefully this will solve the issue. If not, you could indeed send the computer to a 3rd-party computer repair shop and have the diagnose the problem. If you decide to go that route I'll be happy to recommend a few companies that specialize in Macs. Obviously, there would be a charge for looking at the machine, but it would give you a definitive answer to your question.

Again, if the solution is to either replace the logic board or other expensive hardware, I suggest trying to sell the computer on Ebay for parts (which is becoming more and more popular) and getting another Mac, if you are able to.


Sincerely,
Vishad
macosx.com

jgolds - Jan 27, 2007 - 9:11 am

wow thank you. well..the story thickens. I called Apple., becasue the hard drive was JUST replaced a month ago, it is under warranty for 90 more days. The tech walked me through a few things and we changed the preferences in the Library and it actually seemd to help. However yesterday, the apps starting shutting down on their own again. I believe there's somehting I can't fix and am going to bring it in to a place called TEKSERVE in Manhattan. You have all been so helpful, but it looks like this is something that's going to actually have to be physically fixed, that I cannot do. I appreciate this so much and - thank you again for all your help, and off I go to TEKSERVE.
JG