Ticket Options
Question Details
TICKET ARCHIVE -> Powermac G4 Tiger Install Problems
JayG - Jul 1, 2005 - 2:05 pm
Hello,
I will start off by saying that I'm a PC person and know very little about Macs. My nephew traded a Mini Disk recorder he had for a PowerMac G4 (PW800). He used it for a while and then one day it would no longer boot. I now forget the error message, sorry.
I assumed the operating system crashed and since he didn't receive any disks with the system I purchased a new copy of Tiger. I've tried to install it but during the install process it freezes up each and everytime.
I did some research and several people mention the PRAM battery causing issues so I've ordered a new one which should come in next week.
The only other thing I can think of is faulty memory.
If there is any further information I can provide please let me know.
Thank you very much for your help
I will start off by saying that I'm a PC person and know very little about Macs. My nephew traded a Mini Disk recorder he had for a PowerMac G4 (PW800). He used it for a while and then one day it would no longer boot. I now forget the error message, sorry.
I assumed the operating system crashed and since he didn't receive any disks with the system I purchased a new copy of Tiger. I've tried to install it but during the install process it freezes up each and everytime.
I did some research and several people mention the PRAM battery causing issues so I've ordered a new one which should come in next week.
The only other thing I can think of is faulty memory.
If there is any further information I can provide please let me know.
Thank you very much for your help
Stuartpau - Jul 2, 2005 - 3:26 pm
Hi could you give me a bit more info on the computer?.
It is possible that you have a RAM problem but not very likely, if yo uget a startup Chime.
What I need t oknow is exactly what happens when you try to startup the G4.
Also how far did you get with trying to Install Tiger??
This next one is pretty important as it will affect the aproach needed to help you in this situation, and that is, is there anything on the computer that you Must Have. Files Applications Etc.
Also a good bet in this type of situation is to have a thrid part Drive utility such as Diskwarrior or Tech Tool Pro.
The biggest advantage of Diskwarrior is that it does not have to be installed onto your system for it to work and Tech Tool Pro Does.
Diskwarrior and Tech Tool Pro have the ability to look at your HD, seewhat is on it, and rewrite a special disk file called the directory.
A lot of time a computer will fail to start up if this file gets corrupted and Diskwarrior because it does not try to fix the old directory is great be cause it looks at the drive and then goes ahead and rebuilds the entire directory.
If you are using Tiger 10.4.1 currently you wil need the latest Version. This is available from Alsoft. I keep both of these because between them they can save you a lot of problems. Tech Tool Pro once installed keeps track of potential problems on yor HD and can of ten fix things before any real damage occurs.
Hardware failure can stop you booting for sure, so if you can let me know exactly what does happen during startup I would appreciate it.
The PRAM Battery can some times cause a startup problem but usually what happens is you restart your system and you notice the clock is set to 1904 or something. So you reset it to the correct time. Turn off your Mac. Then the next time you start up the clock has lot its time setting. This is probably the most common symptom of a PRAM Battery failure. Generally these batteries last about 5 years.
As for the RAM, during boot up, if you get as far as hearing the Mac Standar startup chime, the RAM is probably OK.
All the problems you are having could be drive related and therefore fixable one way or the other.
A couple of things to try during restart are.
1. Restart the system and immediately hold down the CMD ((AppleKey) and the P&R keys. Keep them held down until you have heard the computer startup chime at least 2 times 3 is better, let go of the keys and see what happens.
This resets the parameter RAM and can some times cure a faulty startup.
2.You can also Reset the NVRAM, by holding down the Option O & F keys.
This will bring you to a page that will let you reset your computer's Firmware.
To reset the firmware type in the following.
If you get this window
reset-nvram
Press Return.
At the Open Firmware prompt, type: reset-all
Press Return.
Example
0 > reset-nvram
Press Return
0 > reset-all
Press Return
The reset-all command should restart your Mac.This will reset all the open firmware and should clean up anything that got in there by accident.
If your Mac does not start Up, and you still have the Open Firmware window available,
you can type "mac-boot" at the Open Firmware prompt,
This should start up your Mac.
Let me know how this lot works and let's see what we can come up with OK?
--------
Stuart
It is possible that you have a RAM problem but not very likely, if yo uget a startup Chime.
What I need t oknow is exactly what happens when you try to startup the G4.
Also how far did you get with trying to Install Tiger??
This next one is pretty important as it will affect the aproach needed to help you in this situation, and that is, is there anything on the computer that you Must Have. Files Applications Etc.
Also a good bet in this type of situation is to have a thrid part Drive utility such as Diskwarrior or Tech Tool Pro.
The biggest advantage of Diskwarrior is that it does not have to be installed onto your system for it to work and Tech Tool Pro Does.
Diskwarrior and Tech Tool Pro have the ability to look at your HD, seewhat is on it, and rewrite a special disk file called the directory.
A lot of time a computer will fail to start up if this file gets corrupted and Diskwarrior because it does not try to fix the old directory is great be cause it looks at the drive and then goes ahead and rebuilds the entire directory.
If you are using Tiger 10.4.1 currently you wil need the latest Version. This is available from Alsoft. I keep both of these because between them they can save you a lot of problems. Tech Tool Pro once installed keeps track of potential problems on yor HD and can of ten fix things before any real damage occurs.
Hardware failure can stop you booting for sure, so if you can let me know exactly what does happen during startup I would appreciate it.
The PRAM Battery can some times cause a startup problem but usually what happens is you restart your system and you notice the clock is set to 1904 or something. So you reset it to the correct time. Turn off your Mac. Then the next time you start up the clock has lot its time setting. This is probably the most common symptom of a PRAM Battery failure. Generally these batteries last about 5 years.
As for the RAM, during boot up, if you get as far as hearing the Mac Standar startup chime, the RAM is probably OK.
All the problems you are having could be drive related and therefore fixable one way or the other.
A couple of things to try during restart are.
1. Restart the system and immediately hold down the CMD ((AppleKey) and the P&R keys. Keep them held down until you have heard the computer startup chime at least 2 times 3 is better, let go of the keys and see what happens.
This resets the parameter RAM and can some times cure a faulty startup.
2.You can also Reset the NVRAM, by holding down the Option O & F keys.
This will bring you to a page that will let you reset your computer's Firmware.
To reset the firmware type in the following.
If you get this window
reset-nvram
Press Return.
At the Open Firmware prompt, type: reset-all
Press Return.
Example
0 > reset-nvram
Press Return
0 > reset-all
Press Return
The reset-all command should restart your Mac.This will reset all the open firmware and should clean up anything that got in there by accident.
If your Mac does not start Up, and you still have the Open Firmware window available,
you can type "mac-boot" at the Open Firmware prompt,
This should start up your Mac.
Let me know how this lot works and let's see what we can come up with OK?
--------
Stuart
JayG - Jul 3, 2005 - 1:39 am
Hello Stuart,
Thank you for your response. It's a PowerMac G4 with a 1.0Ghz processor, 256MB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive.
You are correct, it doesn't seem to be a RAM issue. I tried another stick of memory with the same results.
The Tiger install never fails at the same point. My last attempt made it all the way to the Korean portion of the install and then died. Other times it only made it to the Essentials part. A message pops up and says there was a problem and to hold down the power key for several seconds to restart.
I open the log to view it during the install and sometimes there are a bunch of errors (a lot of crash dumps) and sometimes there is hardly anything.
There is nothing that is needed on the hard drive. I used the built in hard drive utility, earased the drive and ran the check utility which passed the drive.
I resset the PRAM and NVRAM like you suggested but receiving the same results.
Are there are hardware diagnostics utilities designed for Mac's that I can run on the system?
Thank again for all your help
Thank you for your response. It's a PowerMac G4 with a 1.0Ghz processor, 256MB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive.
You are correct, it doesn't seem to be a RAM issue. I tried another stick of memory with the same results.
The Tiger install never fails at the same point. My last attempt made it all the way to the Korean portion of the install and then died. Other times it only made it to the Essentials part. A message pops up and says there was a problem and to hold down the power key for several seconds to restart.
I open the log to view it during the install and sometimes there are a bunch of errors (a lot of crash dumps) and sometimes there is hardly anything.
There is nothing that is needed on the hard drive. I used the built in hard drive utility, earased the drive and ran the check utility which passed the drive.
I resset the PRAM and NVRAM like you suggested but receiving the same results.
Are there are hardware diagnostics utilities designed for Mac's that I can run on the system?
Thank again for all your help
Stuartpau - Jul 3, 2005 - 3:46 pm
HI Jason, it looks like you have definitely got at least a part of the OS installed on your Power mac. Unfortunately, you don't have it all so you are bound to crash out. I am prett ysure that if the Installer starts to install then your hardware has passed the test the Installer runs, to give your hardware the once over. This is beginning to look like the actual Install CD or DVD may be faulty by the way.
Have you tried to erase the drive completely, and then tried to install Tiger?.
If you have, another thing you can try would be to erase the drive completely. At this point you will have the option of turning Journaling on or off. If you turn Journaling on, you have enabled the drive to be protected by the OS which once it is installed uses journaling to fix the drive in case you crash for some reason. If your previous install was done with journaling on, then re erase the drive with it off and try to install from scratch again.
As for tools that check out your hardware, you are pretty much limited to Tech Tool Pro the most current version which is 4.04. This is the full version of the software that Apple sends out with Applecare so you are not losing any facilities on Hardware checking in fact you are gaining some.
If you could try those 2 ways of dealing with your hard drive and trying to reinstall Tiger I would be interested in Knowing the results.
Another thing, that could be an issue, is the Hard Drive itself. If it is a SMART drive it may have a problem on it that returns a fault error when trying to install the OS which of course then fails to install. Again I am pretty sure that if the OS starts to install then the drive is supposed to be OK.
To check this out you will need a tool such as Diskwarrior which is able to check out the SMART chip and let you know if the drive is OK or not. I actually had this problem with one of my drives in a Powermac G4 and I ignored the fact that the drive kept failing the SMART test as it seemed to be working fine to me. That is right up until I decided to install Panther OS X 10.3. Then what I got is pretty much what you are getting and I had to replace the drive, which is pretty easy to do.
As far as cleaning out the computer, I don't know how you feel about going inside the machine, you obviously di to get the RAM in, so if you feel OK about it, there is a little button on the the motherboard, near to the CPU that you can press. There is only the one button so if you see one that's it. It is pretty small and most of them are like a raised flattened cube, with asmall white round button in the middle. Not all of them ar exactly like this but I hope this gives you some idea of what to look for. I would wait until you replace the PRAM battery just so you reduce the amount of times you have to get inside the machine, and having a good PRAM battery could help out here.
This will totally reset the computer, unlike the PRAM and the NVRAM which only clear certain areas.
I will take a look into the Apple Knowledgebase to see if I can find out the exact location of this button in your system.
Do you have a Firewire drive that you can plug into your system and try to see if you can install the OS on that drive to see how far it gets on the Install.
If you do this and the Install fails again, you are down to just 2 possibilities.
The first one I would check is the OS X Install disk itself, it could be damaged. Unfortunately these days the damage may not be visible, and about the only way to know is to either try it on another Mac or get it replaced. This does not happen a lot but it does happen, and some times cleaning the Disk itself can cure the problem. If you look at what is happening, the fact that the OS starts to install, and then fails, could easily indicate a faulty disk.
If the Install disk is not faulty and you can determine that the HD is not faulty, then you can be pretty sure that the computer has some kind of problem in it.
I will also need to check to see if your system is compatible with Tiger because as time goes by, the older macs become less capable of running the newer OS's. I am almost certain your system supports Tiger as it is not that old.
So to summarize, you really have to check that HD out to see if it is faulty or not. To the best of my knowledge you need to have Techtool Pro Installed before you can use it, I may be wrong so if you want to call Micromat to find out if you can start up your Mac with their CD, give them a call at 800-829-6227(U.S. )only. Make sure that you ask them if Tech Tool Pro will run without you actually installing it on your system, tell them why if needed.
If it will boot up without being installed and run, then you can check your hardware, your drives, pretty much everything.
Please note that as good at checking hardware out as Tech Tool Pro is, any software for that matter that depends on the computer working at some level, to be able to run hardware checks, can miss some of the more esoteric problems that computers can have.
If Tech Tool pro will not work until it is installed on your system, then you are going to need Diskwarrior to check out the SMART function on the drive if it has one. Also Diskwarrior can examine the drive to see what is on it and although it cannot make a drive with a faulty OS on it, boot up, it can show you if the Drive is OK or not and what is on the drive. Both these tools are very powerful in their own way. tech Tool Pro, is an excellent all round tool, but o Hard Drives, Diskwarrior is definitely number one.
So that a pretty big list of stuff to get through, it is definitley very important that you get the Install CD checked out somehow.
Resetting the Motherboard could definitely help if something has bad data in it.
Erase Drive turning Journaling on/Off and reinstalling Tiger each way, could help
Trying an Install on an External Firewire drive is a eally good idea, plus you if you can get that to work, you will be able to check out the drive inside your computer.
Check that Tiger will actually work on your System.
I will see if I can find the Tiger compatibility list, and the where the motherboard button is on your mac.
I am pretty sure your Mac is Tiger capable it is not that old.
Again, let me know what happens with all this lot and we will take it from there.
By the way do you have access to any other Mac with Firewire in it?
Stuart
Have you tried to erase the drive completely, and then tried to install Tiger?.
If you have, another thing you can try would be to erase the drive completely. At this point you will have the option of turning Journaling on or off. If you turn Journaling on, you have enabled the drive to be protected by the OS which once it is installed uses journaling to fix the drive in case you crash for some reason. If your previous install was done with journaling on, then re erase the drive with it off and try to install from scratch again.
As for tools that check out your hardware, you are pretty much limited to Tech Tool Pro the most current version which is 4.04. This is the full version of the software that Apple sends out with Applecare so you are not losing any facilities on Hardware checking in fact you are gaining some.
If you could try those 2 ways of dealing with your hard drive and trying to reinstall Tiger I would be interested in Knowing the results.
Another thing, that could be an issue, is the Hard Drive itself. If it is a SMART drive it may have a problem on it that returns a fault error when trying to install the OS which of course then fails to install. Again I am pretty sure that if the OS starts to install then the drive is supposed to be OK.
To check this out you will need a tool such as Diskwarrior which is able to check out the SMART chip and let you know if the drive is OK or not. I actually had this problem with one of my drives in a Powermac G4 and I ignored the fact that the drive kept failing the SMART test as it seemed to be working fine to me. That is right up until I decided to install Panther OS X 10.3. Then what I got is pretty much what you are getting and I had to replace the drive, which is pretty easy to do.
As far as cleaning out the computer, I don't know how you feel about going inside the machine, you obviously di to get the RAM in, so if you feel OK about it, there is a little button on the the motherboard, near to the CPU that you can press. There is only the one button so if you see one that's it. It is pretty small and most of them are like a raised flattened cube, with asmall white round button in the middle. Not all of them ar exactly like this but I hope this gives you some idea of what to look for. I would wait until you replace the PRAM battery just so you reduce the amount of times you have to get inside the machine, and having a good PRAM battery could help out here.
This will totally reset the computer, unlike the PRAM and the NVRAM which only clear certain areas.
I will take a look into the Apple Knowledgebase to see if I can find out the exact location of this button in your system.
Do you have a Firewire drive that you can plug into your system and try to see if you can install the OS on that drive to see how far it gets on the Install.
If you do this and the Install fails again, you are down to just 2 possibilities.
The first one I would check is the OS X Install disk itself, it could be damaged. Unfortunately these days the damage may not be visible, and about the only way to know is to either try it on another Mac or get it replaced. This does not happen a lot but it does happen, and some times cleaning the Disk itself can cure the problem. If you look at what is happening, the fact that the OS starts to install, and then fails, could easily indicate a faulty disk.
If the Install disk is not faulty and you can determine that the HD is not faulty, then you can be pretty sure that the computer has some kind of problem in it.
I will also need to check to see if your system is compatible with Tiger because as time goes by, the older macs become less capable of running the newer OS's. I am almost certain your system supports Tiger as it is not that old.
So to summarize, you really have to check that HD out to see if it is faulty or not. To the best of my knowledge you need to have Techtool Pro Installed before you can use it, I may be wrong so if you want to call Micromat to find out if you can start up your Mac with their CD, give them a call at 800-829-6227(U.S. )only. Make sure that you ask them if Tech Tool Pro will run without you actually installing it on your system, tell them why if needed.
If it will boot up without being installed and run, then you can check your hardware, your drives, pretty much everything.
Please note that as good at checking hardware out as Tech Tool Pro is, any software for that matter that depends on the computer working at some level, to be able to run hardware checks, can miss some of the more esoteric problems that computers can have.
If Tech Tool pro will not work until it is installed on your system, then you are going to need Diskwarrior to check out the SMART function on the drive if it has one. Also Diskwarrior can examine the drive to see what is on it and although it cannot make a drive with a faulty OS on it, boot up, it can show you if the Drive is OK or not and what is on the drive. Both these tools are very powerful in their own way. tech Tool Pro, is an excellent all round tool, but o Hard Drives, Diskwarrior is definitely number one.
So that a pretty big list of stuff to get through, it is definitley very important that you get the Install CD checked out somehow.
Resetting the Motherboard could definitely help if something has bad data in it.
Erase Drive turning Journaling on/Off and reinstalling Tiger each way, could help
Trying an Install on an External Firewire drive is a eally good idea, plus you if you can get that to work, you will be able to check out the drive inside your computer.
Check that Tiger will actually work on your System.
I will see if I can find the Tiger compatibility list, and the where the motherboard button is on your mac.
I am pretty sure your Mac is Tiger capable it is not that old.
Again, let me know what happens with all this lot and we will take it from there.
By the way do you have access to any other Mac with Firewire in it?
Stuart
JayG - Jul 6, 2005 - 11:51 pm
Hello,
Tiger was brand new and purchased directly from Apple and it passes the initial check at start of the install. I don't have another Mac system to try the disk out on though. I may give Apple a call and see if they can send me another disk just to rule that possibility.
I have tried to erase the disk completely with both journaling on and off. The hard drive does have SMART built in but that passes the built in test also. I'm going to try another drive tomorrow that doesn't have SMART built in and see if there is any change. I don't have an external Firewire drive but will try and find someone I can borrow one from.
Thank you for the recomendation on some diagnostics tools but I was hoping for some freeware since after I'm done with this system I won't be dealing with another Mac system.
I replaced the PRAM battery and hit the PMU reset button both that also did no good.
I was desperate so I replaced the hard drive IDE cable and tried another IDE channel on the logic board just to rule that out.
So tomorrow I'll try another hard drive and I'll even try another DVD-ROM just to rule that out also. I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks again for your help
Jason
Tiger was brand new and purchased directly from Apple and it passes the initial check at start of the install. I don't have another Mac system to try the disk out on though. I may give Apple a call and see if they can send me another disk just to rule that possibility.
I have tried to erase the disk completely with both journaling on and off. The hard drive does have SMART built in but that passes the built in test also. I'm going to try another drive tomorrow that doesn't have SMART built in and see if there is any change. I don't have an external Firewire drive but will try and find someone I can borrow one from.
Thank you for the recomendation on some diagnostics tools but I was hoping for some freeware since after I'm done with this system I won't be dealing with another Mac system.
I replaced the PRAM battery and hit the PMU reset button both that also did no good.
I was desperate so I replaced the hard drive IDE cable and tried another IDE channel on the logic board just to rule that out.
So tomorrow I'll try another hard drive and I'll even try another DVD-ROM just to rule that out also. I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks again for your help
Jason
Stuartpau - Jul 7, 2005 - 2:08 pm
HI Jason, if you are not going to be dealing with another Mac after this one it is really not worth buying extra software.
On the subject of the DVD, it might succesfully run the initial test application, but as they are set up on a ttrack basis, it is still possible for the CD/DVD to fail at some point further down the track (Line) so to speak.
It's a pity you don't have a firewire drive kicking around as that might save you having to buy a new internal drive.
By the wya switching the IDE channel for your drive may not work, unless you let the system know that you have moved your startup drive to a different location.
To do that you have to hold down the option key and that will give you a list of drives that have startup capability on them. Of course i this case if you don't have full verion of OS X available or OS 9 then you won't get anything anyway.
Let me know what happens, with the new drive.
I do have a couple of scripts that may help you get going but lets get that new drive first OK
--------
Stuart
On the subject of the DVD, it might succesfully run the initial test application, but as they are set up on a ttrack basis, it is still possible for the CD/DVD to fail at some point further down the track (Line) so to speak.
It's a pity you don't have a firewire drive kicking around as that might save you having to buy a new internal drive.
By the wya switching the IDE channel for your drive may not work, unless you let the system know that you have moved your startup drive to a different location.
To do that you have to hold down the option key and that will give you a list of drives that have startup capability on them. Of course i this case if you don't have full verion of OS X available or OS 9 then you won't get anything anyway.
Let me know what happens, with the new drive.
I do have a couple of scripts that may help you get going but lets get that new drive first OK
--------
Stuart
JayG - Jul 15, 2005 - 11:29 am
Well I got around to trying another hard drive with the same results. I put the drive in that I was using and gave the install another try. I deselected all the optional stuff so the install was down to 1.9GB's and the install actually finished. As I suspected the machine still doesn't function properly. Sometimes it will run for 2 minutes then other times it will run for 25 minutes and then it will either freeze or the message saying I need to restart comes up.
So at this point I would assume either the logic board, processor, power supply or RAM isn't functioning properly. I need to track down some hardware diagnostics software I can borrow from someone to see if this thing is worth fixing or not.
Jason
So at this point I would assume either the logic board, processor, power supply or RAM isn't functioning properly. I need to track down some hardware diagnostics software I can borrow from someone to see if this thing is worth fixing or not.
Jason
Stuartpau - Jul 15, 2005 - 9:02 pm
Well I have to agree with you it does sound like hardware failure.
About the only software I am aware of that will test out your Mac is Tech Tool Pro, and like almost any other software that is used to diagnose a hardware issue, unless it is an issue with items that are peripheral to the Logic system itself, then you actually have to take the logic board out of the machine, and plug it in to a test bed that does not require the Logic board to be functioning properly.
There is one other thing you could try, a little risky but not bad, and that is ensure that the CPU is properly seated in it socket. The fact that your system is running for a few minutes and thne locking up seems to indicate a heat related problem. There is the possibility that your power supply is losing one of it's out put voltages, I cannot swear to the range of output voltages on the Mac supply, but geberally the Power supplies output a +5v a -5V a +12V and a -12V. IF you hav a good test meter digital preferably you could check out the Power supply to see if this is what is happening. Also check for any socket based chips and connecters to make sure they are all seated properly.
That is about all you can do your self with a Mac unless you happen ot have some fairly serious electronic test gear, and then you will probably need a full circuit diagram.
The fact that the system itself runs for a varied time indicates that the basic logic circuits ae functioning as they should, so somewhere, somethig in the system is generating an error message that generates the restart message or possibly you are losing part of the power supply.
I actually had something very similar to this happen t ome on a brand bew G5 and it had t obe returned for repair 3 times before I got it back working. Apparently in my case it was a pin on one of the CPU's that was not seated properly and once that haad been fixed everything has worked fine since, but I had no choice but to send it bacl to Apple for repair. Fortunately for me I ahd the Applecare warranty.
I would check on the items I have mentioned above, unfortunately once the problem gets into actual hardware failure there is not too much i cna do from this end.
If you wish I cna put your question back on the open bord and see if there is someone else who can help you. Let me know what you wish in that respect.
If you do try reseating the CPU and testing the Power supply cables connectors etc let me know if that helped at all.
If you do manage to find some software that will test your hardware thouroughly I would be really interested in getting it for myself so if you do hear of any please would you let me know about it.
I am really sorry I have not been able to resolve your problem, possibly someone else here can, so if you wish me to put your problem back to the other Techs let me know OK
--------
Stuart
About the only software I am aware of that will test out your Mac is Tech Tool Pro, and like almost any other software that is used to diagnose a hardware issue, unless it is an issue with items that are peripheral to the Logic system itself, then you actually have to take the logic board out of the machine, and plug it in to a test bed that does not require the Logic board to be functioning properly.
There is one other thing you could try, a little risky but not bad, and that is ensure that the CPU is properly seated in it socket. The fact that your system is running for a few minutes and thne locking up seems to indicate a heat related problem. There is the possibility that your power supply is losing one of it's out put voltages, I cannot swear to the range of output voltages on the Mac supply, but geberally the Power supplies output a +5v a -5V a +12V and a -12V. IF you hav a good test meter digital preferably you could check out the Power supply to see if this is what is happening. Also check for any socket based chips and connecters to make sure they are all seated properly.
That is about all you can do your self with a Mac unless you happen ot have some fairly serious electronic test gear, and then you will probably need a full circuit diagram.
The fact that the system itself runs for a varied time indicates that the basic logic circuits ae functioning as they should, so somewhere, somethig in the system is generating an error message that generates the restart message or possibly you are losing part of the power supply.
I actually had something very similar to this happen t ome on a brand bew G5 and it had t obe returned for repair 3 times before I got it back working. Apparently in my case it was a pin on one of the CPU's that was not seated properly and once that haad been fixed everything has worked fine since, but I had no choice but to send it bacl to Apple for repair. Fortunately for me I ahd the Applecare warranty.
I would check on the items I have mentioned above, unfortunately once the problem gets into actual hardware failure there is not too much i cna do from this end.
If you wish I cna put your question back on the open bord and see if there is someone else who can help you. Let me know what you wish in that respect.
If you do try reseating the CPU and testing the Power supply cables connectors etc let me know if that helped at all.
If you do manage to find some software that will test your hardware thouroughly I would be really interested in getting it for myself so if you do hear of any please would you let me know about it.
I am really sorry I have not been able to resolve your problem, possibly someone else here can, so if you wish me to put your problem back to the other Techs let me know OK
--------
Stuart
IF THIS IS YOUR QUESTION AND YOU WISH TO RESPOND, LOGIN HERE FIRST.
