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TICKET ARCHIVE -> mac os 10.5 not booting

jac_el40 - Apr 21, 2008 - 8:11 pm

hi there. Am in serious need of some help/advice

I have an iMac G5 power pc. It loads mac os running leopard but only gets so far as the grey screen with apple logo and progress wheel. The starting sound isn't sounding at all but I know for a fact the computer was muted before this happenned

I was previously running a around 5 programs before it started doing this and kept popping up with a window saying it was running out of memory and to close some applications. Trying to close some it then decided to freeze so I resarted it by holding the power button

I've tried to boot in safe mode by holding the shift key but it doesn't change from the grey logo screen. I've unplugged all peripherals and left the computer for a long time before rebooting.

I have booted accessing open firmware succesfully and was able to eject the disc that was in. To my knowledge I don't know if there is a way to safe boot from there
I've only got a bluetooth keyboard and mouse as well if that makes a difference

Any help or knowledge that can shed some light on this would be most appreciated. Hope ive included all thr relrevant information. Thank you for taking the time

(*as I'm typing this it seems to have moved to the deep blue, plain screen with a smaller progress wheel after about 10 minutes of the progress wheel. Hopefully it will slowly load but its been on this one for a further 10 mind or so so I'm not holding my breath. Is there anything I should do to stop it from doing the same thing if it loads?)

Serenak - Apr 21, 2008 - 8:57 pm

Hello Jac

thanks for using macosx.com and I will try to advise/assist you as best I can

Let's start at the start...

the boot chime isn't chiming - not important... especially as you say it was muted when it locked up... strangely the volume setting last used is not relevant to the startup chime volume - but mute on/off is!?!

So that is something you can forget about.

1Gb of RAM may not be cutting edge but is plenty to run 10.5 and even some memory hungry Apps (CS3 or WoW for example) - if you got "out of memory" warnings I would suspect a "runaway" App or a memory leak... what were you running more exactly? Several older browsers (including both safari and firefox had these...) Oh yes and MS Office is a pig for suddenly munching RAM and CPU for no obvious reason....

So right now that doesn't help much... when you killed the OS all that should die -

First you should ideally attach a wired KB&M... preferably the Apple ones that came with the Mac then try the following -
1) restart and hold Apple Alt/Option P R till it chimes at least 2x (don't worry you don't get a chime atm, the reset will bring the chime back)
2) or achieve the same in OF by using the commands reset-nvram (hit return) reset-all (hit return and it should reboot)

If that doesn't do it do to the restart and hold Apple S - after the scary Unix stuff type /sbin/fsck -fy (you will see that just above the prompt rather helpfully actually)
If it says repairs done or System Modified or similar repeat the command...
it should come back as "the disk 'your disk' appears OK" or "no repairs were necessary" after that type shutdown -r now
You can use reboot... but shutdown -r now is the best option

IF you can get back into the Finder/Desktop you should a) back up now and b) after that run Disk Utility to "repair permissions" (which repairs nothing.... it should really be called "reset permissions"

IF none of this works consider these..

a) Restart holding the T till you get a big FW symbol... use a firewire cable to connect to another Mac as a remote HDD and backup vital data

b) restart from the Installer and do an Archive and Install (preserve users and settings if you can)

alternatively come back to me and we will look at it with more info

jac_el40 - Apr 22, 2008 - 5:46 pm

thanks ever so much for your help. It seems to be up and running as normal.

For your information I tried the OF option with no effect but managed to boot it up succesfully through the unix commands

The problem seems to have originated from the eyetv programme that I had running, recording just before the fault. Now that it has booted up the program fails to open and the light doesn't appear on the USB stick. If there is anything you think would get it working again I would be most grateful. Although I think I'm already resigned to the fact that its had its day

Again thanks for all your help. This is the second time I have submitted a question and and very pleased with the results. Hop you continue to keep up the good work

Serenak - Apr 22, 2008 - 6:37 pm

Glad that I helped you get it back up on its feet

As for the eyetv... you could try reinstalling it - but if it was capable of wreaking such havoc would you want to trust it again?

jac_el40 - Apr 22, 2008 - 7:12 pm

I tried to reinstall it as well as restarting and deleting the recent recordings but it still doesn't seem to want to get going. Being as the light is still absent i think it's a hardware fault somehow

Neverming, im just glad i'm buying a new eyetv dongle rather than a new imac. Thanks again for the invaluable help