BB iMac G3 Won't Boot From CD

I can't seem to get my friend's G3 iMac (Bondi Blue) that to boot from a CD. It's spent it's life as part of a corporate network so on boot it tries to load something from the network called "Macintosh Manager." Because it is no longer connected to that and I don't have an admin password, I can't get any further. It forces me to shutdown.
I don't have the original OS9 systems disks, but I do have a OSX 10.2 install disk. But I can't get the CDROM drive to boot the disk. I can hear it spin up for 2-3 seconds, but then it stops. It continues to try this until I eject the CD, then it goes into it's Macintosh Manager behavior described above.
I suspect the CD drive is bad, or perhaps the drive control electronics on the logic board are shot. Any ideas?
Frank

Depending on just how paranoid they were at that company, they could have made it very difficult to boot from an alternate source of software. But if you can find a Mac OS 9 CD, try booting from that and removing anything with "Multiple Users", "MultiUser Startup", or "Mac Manager" in its name, and you may succeed in defeating it.
The Bondi Blue iMac is very much like an early iBook with an integrated CRT. It uses a very similar insubstantial CD Drive. But changing Hardware requires removing the chassis, so I would try the OS 9 CD first. OS X 10.2 is very cranky. It may just be deciding not to boot...because!

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IMac G5 won't boot from CD drive, Please Help

My iMac G5 won't boot from the CD drive. There is no operating system on the hard drive so I want to install a fresh copy of Leopard. I have tried a couple different methods, but I keep getting the same end result. The first method I tried was booting from the CD drive by holding the C key during start up. The Leopard disc was automatically ejected after about 20-30 seconds. The second method I tried was booting the iMac to the "question mark file screen," which is when I inserted the Leopard disc. Usually on other Mac computers, this is when the computer will show the Apple logo and prompt you with the installation process. Not this iMac, it just ejects the disc shortly after I insert it. I'm not sure if it's the CD drive that is having the issue, the hard drive, or something else.
If you have any ideas, they would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
Chris

Where did you get the CD from?
If it is from another Mac, it is probably specific to the hardware in that Mac and is not capable of boot your iMac.
Allan

Imac g5 won't boot from any Cd/DVD

Hey,
New member here.
I have an Imac 20" 1.8 Ghz PowerPC G5, running Mac OS X 10.4.9.
My problem is my computer won't boot from from any DVD or Cd, not the original system disc (10.3.5), not from a newer Imac system disc (10.4.7), not from a Disc Warrior 3.03 disc.
What I get from the Disc Warrior disc is a gray screen with white letters backed in black, saying
"panic (cpu 0 caller 0xooze49do): unable to find driver for this platform: "powermac8,1""
Plus other stuff written underneath it, looking like a log of how far it went.
When I try to boot from the original 10.3.5 DVD, it does boot up but doesn't work after that - it gets to the language to choose and stops.
When I try to boot from the 10.4.7 DVD, I get the gray screen, same results as the Disc Warrior cd.
I even copied my system folder (10.4.9) onto a firwire drive and start from that, but I get the gray screen again.
I zapped the pram, and reset the Open Firmware - still no dice.
Can anybody shed some light on this?!?
Many thanks!
Rufmanj

To Apple Discussions.
Please check out the following thread which the original posted had the same error you had.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4459207#4459207
You may find some helpful troubleshooting solutions in the above thread.
Make absolutly sure you are using the "DVDs" that originally came with the computer.
Also, see Knowledge Base Article; http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106805 Mac OS X: "Broken folder" icon, prohibitory sign, or kernel panic when computer starts

IMac G5 won't boot from an external Seagate Freeagent FireWire drive

Hi guys,
So, the internal drive on my sister's iMac G5 finally died a few days ago. On my advice, she stopped in to Best Buy and bought a Seagate Freeagent Xtreme 1tb external drive (with FireWire). I had her connect the Seagate to her MacBook (in Windows Boot Camp mode) and use the Seagate Manager to disable the drive's power-saving mode. I then talked her through using her OS X Leopard DVD to (re)partition the Seagate (using the Apple Partition Map scheme) and format it as Mac OS Extended Journaled, and Leopard installed just fine on the external drive (from the G5, via USB).
However, now when she tried to boot from the external over FireWire (by holding down "Option" on power-on), it plays dead (no lights), and doesn't show as a viable boot device. When plugged into the laptop (also over firewire) it shows up just fine on the desktop. We would use USB to boot, but her G5 doesn't support booting over USB.
What am I missing here? We've been working on this for three days, and have gotten so freakin' close to having her iMac up and running again, but the cursed Seagate drive simply refuses to "kick in" at bootup and work on the G5!
Any ideas would be awesome,
Huxley

Honestly, that's exactly what I would do if I had hands-on access to the iMac, but such a swap is a bit beyond my sister's skill-set.
We never did figure out what the issue was, so I had my sister return the drive and order one from MacSales.com (aka Other World Computing) - if anyone will have a Mac-friendly drive, it's those folks!
Huxley

IMac 20" won't boot from AppleCare disk

Hello all,
I have a new (1.5 weeks) iMac iSight 20" and am thrilled with its performance (it does not have any noticeable noise, nor does it have any dead pixels). I have tried to boot it from the AppleCare disk (the one with TechTool on it) but it will not boot. I have used that disk to install TechTool successfully on the iMac HD, but it will not boot from that disk. The iMac will boot from the OSX install disk that came with the iMac, and I have done so in order to run repair permissions before and after updates. Is there something easy I'm missing regarding booting from the Applecare disk? I'm not new to Macs, but I am new to iMacs and OSX. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Hello all,
Acting upon the advice I received here, I called AppleCare. Although it took 32 minutes, they did finally agree that the issue was with the AppleCare disk, and they are sending me a new one. I did note one interesting thing. I visited MicroMat's web page to see what the most current version is of TechTool Pro, and it is 3.0.4. That is the version on my current AppleCare disk. I guess the incompatability must be with something else on the disk. Thanks for all the prompt replies and great advice.

My 27" iMac Freezes, Won't boot from DVD

My iMac has started to freeze up every few minutes. Every so often, it becomes unresponsive; the mouse cursor still moves (sometimes it turns into a beach ball), but I can't click or type anything. Whenever this happens, the hard drive begins to churn as if it's reading or writing something big. This usually lasts only about thirty seconds to a minute, but it's happening with frustrating regularity.
I've been trying to troubleshoot this for a few days, now. I'll walk you through the steps I've tried so far.
I ran a check on the hard drive with Disk Utility. This came back with a message about the files/directories not matching up with their expected counts. The solution it suggested was to boot from a Snow Leopard disc and let Disk Utility run a Repair Disk while the startup drive is not mounted. It was at this point that I realized that I couldn't boot from the dvd. Whether holding 'C' or 'Option', when it tries to boot from the disc, it gets to the Apple logo and then hangs.
I kept researching and found a workaround; boot into Single User Mode and perform fsck, which fixed the Disk Utility error, but did not solve the freezes/noises, and I still can't boot from the dvd.
Any ideas?

Thank you for your prompt response.
Well, I'm not sure if I explained it clearly. Holding the Option key does indeed bring up a list of bootable devices. The problem arises when control is passed to the Snow Leopard disc. The Apple logo flashes, I can hear the optical drive being accessed, but then it locks up.
I should also clarify that it's not the disc that came with the iMac. I just moved and can't find the original disc, so I borrowed my neighbor's (which came from a Macbook he bought after mine (which I bought last year)). I am under the impression that Macs can't boot from discs that are older than the version of OS X that they shipped with. I wouldn't think that's the issue, here, as his came out later than mine, but I've still got a lot to learn about life in the Appleverse.
My data should be safe--I've got an up to date Time Machine backup on an external drive. The performance issues aside, I'm really looking to understand the underlying problem(s) here.
So, one option is that the RAM might be bad. I can test that by swapping out each DIMM and checking if the problem is resolved. One thing I don't understand, though, is why bad RAM would manifest as the hard drive being accessed. Is there a definitive way to test the logic board, as there is for testing RAM?
Also, I keep thinking of other little syptoms which may or may not be related.
Recap of Symptoms:
Magic Mouse occasionally loses its magic (right click, multitouch, etc.) and needs to be turned off and on.
Free disk space fluctuates by as much as eight gigs (without my intervention).
System stalls (accompanied by HD access sounds) multiple times per hour.
Can't boot from dvds (though, this could be a version problem).
**Fixed: Disk Utility Verify Disk error.
I do understand that this might be a hardware error, and I certainly know how much trouble that sort of thing is to find/fix. I'm definitely willing to open the case and swap out DIMMs and drives, but not until I've exhausted my software solution options. *crosses fingers*

Bondi iMac 233 won't boot from hard drive,

I have a Bondi iMac 233, 192MB running OSX 10.3 which was being throw out at work, the hard drive (40GB IBM Deathstar) was failing but it would still boot up. I installed an original 6GB iMac Hard Drive, low level formated the drive and installed OS9.2. Now the iMac refuses to boot from this hard drive or even another 4GB Hard Drive.
The iMac will boot from CD and I can see and install a new OS onto the Hard Drive, OS9 or OSX, I can choose the drive under the Startup Control Panel but the computer refuses to boot from the Hard Drive.
I have zapped the PRAM,
Reset the NVRAM
Reset the CUDA chip.
Reset the Logic Board
Reseated Cables
Reseated Processor and memory modules
All to no avail.
Does anyone have any other ideas?
thanks
Bondi iMac Mac OS 9.2.x

I've been doing this with about 14 iMacs slot/tray that I'm prepping for inner city kindergartens in Chicago. I have had that problem where in moving from 10.3.9 to 9.2.2 the iMacs wouldn't recognize the HDs. Booting from an original iMac OS 9 install disc and selecting the HD as start up has always solved the problem for me.
However, and maybe this is related,
I've had the problem with a couple of tray loaders where in moving from 10 to 9 it wouldn't recognize the CD-ROM drive. I went through a bunch of drives before I figured out that booting from an iMac OS 8.6 CD made the iMac rerecognize the drive. I was able to reset?? all the drives that wouldn't previously work using this method. Weird but maybe there's a chip in the drive board that needed to be reset. Dunnno about the HDs tho' but it could be related.
Richard

IMac G4 won't boot from FireWire HDD

Hi everyone, I recently got a 1st generation iMac G4 with OS 9.2. I updated RAM to 768 mb and now I'd like to install Tiger on it. I found my old Tiger DVD but it looks like the DVD drive in to the iMac doesn't work properly. When I put in the DVD, it spins a little bit and than is expelled. After a few attempts, I was able to make the iMac read it, and open the installer, but when I pressed the Restart button I got an error saying that the CD (??) could not be set as startup device. It was indeed grayed out in the Startup Disk Control Panel. I don't know whether the problem is the DVD drive or the disk itself (which looks a bit scratchy).
On the Internet I found out that I could try to boot via FireWire on an external HDD. I had the .dmg of the Tiger DVD I did when I bought the original disk, and with the Restore option I put the image on the drive (1 TB, FW400 MyBook, previously formatted in a single partition using Apple Partition Map) so that it can be recognized by OS9 as a bootable DVD. And indeed it is. The problem is that, again, when I press the restart button in the Install Mac OS X program I get the same error massage saying: "Startup Disk was unable to select the install CD as the startup disk (-2)". This time, though, I can manage to manually set the external drive as the startup disk, but when I reboot I get the "question mark icon" (which usually means that the Mac is unable read the partition selected), and then it reboots in OS9. I cannot understand if the partition I created is not bootable, or if the drive is not read by the open firmware on boot. If I boot with the option key depressed, the only boot option I get is the internal HDD, and I can't manage to see the external HDD: I tried to change cable, change ports, press refresh button multiple times, but it doesn't see the FireWire drive. I also tried to reset NVRAM (which brought back to life the internal speaker), open firmware and PMU, in this order, but this didn't solve the problem.
So what else can I do? Thank you for your help, I hope my English was good enough for you to understand the problem :)
Dario

Unfortunately, it didn't work :( so the situation now is as follows: I bought a FW400-to-FW800 adapter on eBay, and it perfectly works; my mid-2010 MacBookPro (Snow Leopard) has a perfectly working SuperDrive; I have a copy of Tiger's retail DVD with some scratches and a copy of the same DVD I made from a disk image of Tiger that I made when I bought the disk some years ago.
So I connected the 2 Macs via the FireWire cable+adapter, I booted the MacBook in Target Disk Mode and put the DVD (I tried with both of them) in the SuperDrive, and then turned on the iMac on OS 9.2, but nothing appears on it's desktop. On the System Profiler, in the Devices&Volumes tab, in the FireWire section I only see a kind of code that I also see when there's nothing plugged in. I tried to change FireWire ports but nothing happens, apart from the iMac freezing sometimes. Am I doing something wrong? Or is it the case my MacBook is not suitable to do this job?
Thanks again

Won't Boot from Internal

I have an iMac that won't boot from its internal drive. My Macbook Pro can boot from the internal drive of the iMac and the iMac can boot from the internal drive of the Macbook Pro. Any idea whats up?

Sorry about that I should have put more details in, I was typing it out in a hurry as I was working on the computer.
Here is what happened.
The iMac has one of the new i3 processors and isn't able to boot Snow Leopard 10.6.0
I booted the iMacs system on my MacBook and then updated it to 10.6.4, after that the iMac booted fine off of its internal drive.

IMac won't boot from Firewire?

Hey gang-
I wanted to post this to save anyone else pulling out their hair if they have a Mac that won't boot from a Western Digital (WD) external Firewire drive. I recently purchased a Western Digital My Book Studio 2 TB FireWire 800 External Hard Drive.
I bought this drive intending to partition it into two 1TB partitions- one for a bootable backup and one for a Time Machine backup. I do my bootable backups with the application SuperDuper, which is outstanding for this purpose. I have used it to create bootable backups on 3 different Maxtor external Firewire drives, and they have all flawlessly booted all my Macs. I expected no different from this new Western Digital (WD) 2TB drive.
Unfortunately, the WD would not boot 2 out of my 3 Macs when connected via Firewire. It would NOT boot an Intel MacBook (Late 2007 edition) or an Intel iMac (Mid 2007 edition). It does boot our Intel iMac (Mid-2010 edition). Strangely, the WD booted all 3 Macs when connected via USB, though needless to say very slowly in all cases. If you need additional technical information, read on.
Technical Info: The following tests were done with the WD connected via Firewire. The WD is correctly formatted for booting Intel Macs with GPT GUID formatting. Note that the WD appears as a bootable drive in System Preferences->Startup Disk on all 3 of my Macs. But when attempting to boot via Firewire, I get only a grey screen on the Intel MacBook (Late 2007 edition) and the Intel iMac (Mid 2007 edition). The Intel iMac (Mid-2010 edition) boots normally. When booting with the Option Key held down, Startup Manager does NOT see the WD as a bootable drive on the Intel MacBook (Late 2007 edition) and the Intel iMac (Mid 2007 edition). It does appear as a bootable drive on the Intel iMac (Mid-2010 edition).
When connected via USB, the WD boots all three of my Macs, but very slowly compared to the internal drive.
It's probably worth noting that the Late-2007 MacBook and the Mid-2007 iMac all share the then-new Santa Rosa architecture. So I'm guessing that they may share the same Firewire chipset. And for whatever reason, that chipset does not play nice with the WD chipset.
So, bottom line is that if you need a Firewire bootable backup, be sure to test the drive right away so that you don't think you have a bootable backup when in fact you don't.
On the good side, the drive is amazingly quiet. At this point, I need to decide whether to keep the drive, knowing that I have only USB as a bootable option on 2 out my 3 Macs, or return it. But in any case, wanted to pass this on to anyone else having problems booting from an external Firewire drive.

baltwo wrote:
FWIW, many WD HDs won't boot Macs and booting Macs isn't supported. Details at their site. That's the main reason I never recommend their crappy HDs.
Actually I'm very familiar with that list- spent a lot of time looking at this past week!
Ironically, the majority of that page is a list of drives which they claim WILL boot Macs. In fact, the list is entitled "List of Mac-bootable WD external drives..."
And yep, mine is on there...on the list that reads "The following external hard drives should be bootable on Intel-based Mac computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b)" is "MyBook Studio" as well as my drive model number.
But that's all beside the point. Like you, I couldn't recommend their drives at this point. At least make sure if you buy one that the vendor has a good return policy.
Dave

IMac won't boot from HDD or CD. Help!?

Hi,
I recently came back from holiday for a couple of weeks and sat down to start my iMac (24" C2D). The machine just sat at a white screen and wouldn't go anywhere. Thought, ah, I'll just reset the PRAM (unplugged power cable for a min or so), and still same problem. Eventually I got the mac to boot by holding down the power button, the long beep sounded and the mac booted. All was well, until the next time I powered it down. Same thing, however same resolution didnt work...
After numerous attempts holding c, I've managed to boot into the mac installer, which said it couldnt repair the drive through disk utility. As I have time machine backup, thought I'll just start from scratch. Created a new partition (just to make sure everything was fresh), verified disk (no problems), started installer and it crashed towards the very end of the install (just over 1 hour in) with errors of being unable to copy files. After another few hours, managed to boot from CD again, this time install started, left it running overnight, only to find the mac in the morning on, but with a black screen. I've had to power it off and now I'm left with the same issue of a white screen and being unable to boot from CD.
Does any of this make sense to anyone? Could be a failed HDD, but why would I have the issue with the iMac generally refusing to boot from CD? Ran hardware diagnostic (extended) and no problems found.
I now have no hair left...

I assume that model has a back up battery in it? If so, have you changed it recently? If not you may want to replace it. In the meantime, try removing it completely and see if it starts up any better. If the battery is right on the hairy edge of good/too low, it might be corrupting the PRAM (or whatever they call it now on new models) causing start up issues. If you remove it, you won't retain a lot of settings such as Date and Time, but you should also be able to boot up eat time with all default values.
I had the same sort of issue with my eMac and pulling the battery cleared it up. That was many months ago and one of these days I might get around to buying a replacement battery... or not.
Cheers,
Patrick

Upgrade from snow leopard 10.6.8 to montain lion on a iMac system won't boot getting a crossed out circle

Upgrade from snow leopard 10.6.8 to montain lion on a iMac system won't boot getting a crossed out circle

Clean install OS.10.6.8 update it completly. May be you ignored some firmware update.
I have two incedents.
My thunderbolt port stopped working after upgrading to ML 10.8. I booted from external 10.6 , 10.7 still didnt work. Then i clean installed 10.6.8 and ran software update it updated the thunderbolt firmware and all is well now. This firmware update for some reason didnt show up in ML 10.8.
Secondly , when i upgraded my Brother's Macbook from 10.5 to 10.6.3 it would install but stuck with crossed out circle. Then i downgraded checked for update found an efi update , then the 10.6.3 worked fine.

27" iMac won't boot from anything BUT the main drive

Hi all,
My lovely 27" iMac is in perfect working condition, but I thought I'd try to install a OS on a large SD card to see if I would gain any speed.
In the process of doing that (cause I never got that far) I discover that the iMac won't boot from the original install DVD. It simply spits out the DVD when I try to insert into the drive. I'v managed to make an image of the DVD (in a different mac) onto the SD card in order to try an boot from that. No luck. I've tried to insert a original install DVD from my Mac Pro into the iMac, which it reads fine and well, and when I tap the restart button it restarts, but stop with a white screen doing boot up.
If I try to hold down the option key during startup, the iMac WILL let me choose which OS to boot from, but if I choose anything else than the OS already installed it freezes.
I've even tried to boot my Mac Pro from the iMac install DVD - no problems.
I've even run a hardware test on the iMac - no problems.
I am running out of options fast! Please help a devoted Mac-friend.
Take care.
Peter

I WAS using the DVD that came with the machine, but I fear Apple may have sent me the wrong one?
In trying to solve the issues I'd tried other OS disc's (A Mac Pro install DVD and a OS X Leopard DVD) - but none of them would even boot, nor install of my iMac. I always end up with a white screen during boot up.
As I described, the original iMac install DVD would indeed boot my Mac Pro, do the disc seems ok?

IMac can't/won't boot from Leopard DVD

My 1GHz G4 iMac can't or won't boot from the DVD, although I know the media is good.
I get stuck on the grey screen, the rotating bug stops rotating after about 5 minutes.
It will still boot from the hard disk fine, and will boot with other DVDs as well. Hardware diagnostics check out fine.
I did try single user mode, it will get there OK.
Verbose mode spits out a lot of messages (who knew? - lol), but nothing that seems to point to any one issue. It too stops spitting out messages after about 10 minutes.
Any ideas?

I did try the clicking the mouse thing just for the heck of it... no joy.
I do see a few other threads like this one, so I'm not alone on this.
The error messages I see are (not going to type them out all the way):
launchd[1]: Failed to count the number of files in /System/Library/StartupItems no such file or directory
Then a bunch of mDNSResponder errors, also saying either no such file/directory or invalid destination port.
Then a message saying Folder Manager is being asked to create a folder (cach) while running as uid 0
Then Cannot use ATS Persistent Store - switching to old FODB cache code
kextd[47]: root filesystem is read-only; skipping kernel link data generation
followed by a couple of errors from configdp[41]
Then nothing....
Still stuck...

Why won't my Intel iMac boot up, either from the internal hard drive or the DVD drive? It just displays a light grey screen, without any other icons, etc. The fact that it won't boot from the original system DVD is what baffles me the most. Any ideas?

Why won't my Intel iMac boot up, either from the internal hard drive or the DVD drive? It just displays a light grey screen, without any other icons, etc. The fact that it won't boot from the original system DVD is what baffles me the most. Any ideas? It uses the latest version of Mavericks. Thanks!

If the C key for Install Disc or R Command for OS X Recovery startup commands are not working, try holding the Option key for the Startup Manager.
see > Startup Manager: How to select a startup volume
If that does not work and you using a wireless keyboard, it may have become unpaired and you need to dig up a USB keyboard to invoke the startup commands.
For more on gray screen, see > Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup

BB iMac G3 Won't Boot From CD

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