Booting an iMac from a PowerMac??

I have an old PowerMac G4 and a newer, intel-based iMac. No monitor for the G4.
Just was wondering, is it possible to boot an iMac from a PowerMac?

It may be possible, but the following IF conditions must be met.
1. The Power Mac G4 is capable of starting up in FireWire Target Disk Mode.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
2. The startup disk on the Power Mac G4 has Leopard. Leopard is universal. Tiger has separate PowerPC and Intel builds. You won't be able to start up an Intel Mac with PowerPC Tiger.
3. The startup drive in the Power Mac G4 is the set to master, if it is on an IDE bus that has two drives (as master/slave). FireWire Target Disk Mode will only allow access to the drive set to master.
4. The Power Mac G4 is able to start up (normally or in target mode) with no display connected.
If you can do 1-4, connect the Power Mac G4 (in target mode) to the iMac. On the iMac, select the Power Mac's hard drive as the startup disk in System Preferences +Startup Disk+ pane. Restart the iMac.
For point #4, if the Power Mac G4 is able to start up normally with no display connected, and it has at least Tiger as the OS, please post back. I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve, but there may be a better solution using the screen-sharing feature.

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Booting my imac from an external firewire drive suddenly stopped working. Disk still mounts but it will not boot the machine!

I took my MacBook Pro in for repairs and erased the drive for safety AFTER having copied the entire contents to an external firewire 800 drive using SuperDuper!
The copy process made the disk bootable and I was able to boot up my iMac and run it just as if I were working on my MacBook Pro. After a couple of times working this way, the iMac stopped booting from my drive.
The drive shows up when starting up by pressing the option key but then, after a long time, the iMac shows a circle/slash symbol as if it can't find the system files.
If I restart without pressing the option key, the disk mounts on the desktop and I can use it as an external drive just fine! I tried selecting it in System Preferences as the startup disk, but the same thing happens, blank grey screen with the circle/slash.
Since this happened with a Seagat drive - a brand that has failed me in the past many times - I thought it was a disk problem. I had backed up my MacBook pro contents to another Toshiba drive, and booted from there perfectly well for a couple of times...
Until the same thing happened! Thank God I didn't trash the Seagate although it makes very faint clicking noises that will keep me far away from using it again anyway... but that's another story!
iMac runs 10.5.8, the boot disk (and my MacBook) runs on 10.6.8 if that makes any difference... And now I'm scared that when I copy back to my MacBook Pro it might not boot up at all!!!
What gives???
- MerlinCreative

You need to reinstall Snow Leopard onto the external drive:
Reinstall OS X without erasing the drive
Do the following:
1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
Download and install the Combo Updater for the version you prefer from support.apple.com/downloads/.

Help please. Can't boot my iMac from the optical drive.

17" flat panel, 1GHz iMac, running OS 10.2.8.
I've been trying to do some disk maintenance and would like to be able to repair my boot disk. I've tried to boot from the optical drive, using Norton SystemWorks CD-ROM and also my iMac software install and repair DVD, holding down the C key while attempting to boot. After trying for a few seconds, a gray veil drops down and a text box telling me that I have to shut down by holding the power key for many seconds shows up. (Is this a Kernel panic?)
I've also run Repair Permissions. That program seems to stall right at the end, as the status bar is 99% full, and never completes its run.
Any suggestions?

Hi MacGeezer,
DO NOT USE NORTON SYSTEMWORKS
Norton Utilities and Disk Doctor were discontinued almost 2 years ago (for some very good reasons!). It caused much more trouble than it solved.
Here are the articles:
Symantec discontinues Mac Norton Utilities, SystemWorks
Norton Utilities, SystemWorks development halted
TMO Scoop - Symantec Confirms Norton Utilities & SystemWorks' Demise [Updated]
Tech Tool Pro and DiskWarrior are presently the most reliable utilities. For more information on regular housekeeping read this: MacOS X 10.3/10.4: System maintenance

Booting new iMac from portable drive

Hi,
I have a new 27" iMac on which i wanted to reinstall OSX 10.8. I have a small USB hard drive with 10.8.2 which easily boots a 15" MacBook Pro with retina display. However, when i tried the same drive with the iMac i got a grey screen with a circle and a line through it and nothing more happened.
Anyone have an idea as to what might be the problem?
Thanks

The Late 2012 iMac requires a special OS X 10.8.1 and 10.8.2 that it's only available for this iMac, so it's normal that you can't start from a bootable OS X Mountain Lion created with the build for other Macs. Also, you can only get this version from Internet Recovery.
To reinstall OS X Mountain Lion, press Command and R keys while your Mac is starting and reinstall OS X, so it will download the correct OS X build for the Late 2012 iMac

Flicking noise when I boot my iMac from sleep mode??

Another problem that has struck my iMac..
Every time I boot my Mac form sleep mode it comes on and starts clicking/flicking like the fan's cough on somehting. I know it's not the fan and it's most likley to be the HD but worth asking just incase it's a problem that I can fix (which i dought).
I think I'm going to take the Mac into a Apple store and see how much it will cost to fix. Because I can't see myself going back to Microsoft windows again if this brakes.. I would rather just wait and save for a new iMac.
I've had this problem quite a while but never payed much attention to it as I thought it was because of the room tempreture. But it's annoying me now, so if anyone knows what it could be please tell me..
Thnaks
Nick

Been waiting along time for this problem to be fixed. Unfortunately the update hasn't help at all and even made the situation worse. Now my airplay connection from iMac to stereo abruptly stops after about 10-15 min. so I have to go over and quit wifi, start it up and find my airport network. Not sure why it always has a problem with the apple airport network. My neighbor's pc network is always there.

Can I boot an iMac from my PB in Target Disk Mode?

I'm housesitting at my parents this weekend, and would like to know if I can bootup my Powerbook G4 in Target Disk mode and then use it as the Startup volume on my parents Intel iMac. In System Preferences it doesn't give my Hard Drive as an option for a startup volume.
I think I just answered my question... OS X on my Powerbook is the PPC version... and probably can't use the PPC version as a Startup on the Intel....

Hi Joel Jenkins;
I would say NO.
First of all since they have an Intel and you have PowerPC The code will not be compatible. Secondly there the problem that the Intel machine has to have the disk formatted differently. So I don't think this idea will work for you.
Why pray tell were you thinking of doing this any way? Exactly what did you hope to accomplish?
Allan

Install Windows 7 on external drive and boot iMac from it?

Hi everyone,
I want to use Windows 7 on my iMac, I would like to install Windows 7 on an external drive and boot my iMac from this external drive. Is this possible? If yes, any good tutorials?
(I am aware of virtual machines, but am wondering if I can do the above).
Thank you.

Forget trying to use Windows 7 that way.
Add another internal drive to your iMac.
Not knowing which iMac whether you have dual SATA internal like the 2011s.
Those were not "tutorials" but just whatever Google would come up with (a good start but not tutorials or dealing with 7 or hope of success, yes?)
Why? to avoid what you forsee as complications? Not "dirty" or interfere?
Windows tools exist for Windows to import and image and deploy.
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Can I boot imac from macbook install disk 1?

I'm trying to install BootCamp on my intel iMac but it keeps failing at the disk partition, now having repaired permissions and verified the disk the help file tells me to boot my iMac from a startup disk and then load a disk utility. I can't find my Install Disk 1 for my iMac but I do have one for my intel Macbook. Is there a utility prog that sits on the disk that is not device dependent or would it just not work? thanks in advance if anybody can help me....

Hi,
the OSX discs that come with the Intel-Macs are usually bound to this Mac or at least this line of Mac and do not work on other Macs.
Therefor your chances are not good to use the MacBook disc.
Sorry to say you have to start a thorough search for the iMac disc.
Stefan

How do I install Tiger on a G3 iMAC from an external DVD drive?

I want to install Tiger on my PPC G3 iMAC. It is 500MHZ with 512 MB Ram, running 10.3.9. It has a CD drive, but CD version of Tiger is no longer available. I purchased a retail version of Tiger, and, on the advice of the Apple Store personnel, purchased an external DVD drive. It is a USB Lacie drive. My iMAC sees the DVD, but when I click the Install icon, it has a Restart button. Clicking the button restarts for 10.3.9. Same thing happens when I use the "C" key. When I try to assign the DVD drive as the startup drive, it says "ding" and won't assign it. What can I do next?

Take the DVD drive back and exchange it for a Firewire model. You cannot boot the iMac from a USB drive. This is basic information your Apple store personnel should know unless you failed to tell them what Mac model you have.

Why might extracted Snow Leopard MacBookPro drive no longer boot under IMAC Lion?

I'm hoping someone can give a likely explanation for the following sequence of events, and also recommend some next steps. I've been backing up, using Time Machine on a partitioned drive, my 2008 IMAC with Lion and my 2008 MacBookPro with Snow Leopard. Being out of town for the last 3 months, MBP backups were not possible and Murphy's law kicked in as the MBP refused to boot, no chime and black screen. Tried all the discussion group suggestions and then returned home to visit the Apple store.
1. Apple store said it was my logic board and repair would be $310, but if the hard drive was a problem Apple Repair would just swap it out. Apple store would do backup of the drive before sending it for repair if I provided an empty drive.
2. As I didn't have a spare drive, I purchased an OWC USB 3.0 enclosure kit and inserted the drive from the MBP.
3. Plugging into the running IMAC, it came up and everything looked good. TIme Machine recognize the new drive and included it in its list of devices to NOT backup.
4. I decided to see if I could boot the IMAC from this MBP drive by doing a restart with the option key held. It gave me the choice and it worked. Everything looked good and I was able to update my mail and to print. I decided to have Time Machine do a backup and included the IMAC internal drive in the list of devices NOT to backup. Time Machine warned that this MBP was a new computer and that i'd not be able to go back, which concerned me as the whole purpose is to be able to move to a new system if necessary. I did a backup anyway and it copied about 25 GB of some 158 GB so it must have been an update. Everything looked good.
5. I then did a restart and came up under Lion. However the MBP drive was no longer visible on the desktop, but the system recognized that the OWC MBP drive was USB connected. This was a concern.
6. I did a shut down of the IMAC and removed the MBP drive. Rebooted IMAC and then inserted USB MBP drive. It came up this time. Its contents looked good.
7. I then did a restart with the option key held. It gave me the choice to boot from the MBP drive as before and I took it. However it hung with a gray screen, circle with slash, and spinning wheel. No activity from the MBP so I forced IMAC shutdown and removed the MBP drive.
8. Booted the IMAC, but can not get the MBP drive to appear on the desktop although it is recognized as a USB device. No activity from the MBP drive as indicated by no flashing of its light.
I'm mystified as to what has happened. Have I corrupted the MBP drive, or is it likely a hardware failure? I'm thinking about a new computer, but was staying with Snow Leopard as it was only way to keep my scanner working. It was momentarily convenient to be able to boot into Snow Leopard and to work as usual. What can I do with my TIme Machine backup of the MBP if the MBP drive is corrupted? Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Pete, but it doesn't solve my problem.
Apple does something to the recovery partition to make it invisible. When I was trying to setup my 16GB USB stick drive as a "Recoverable Partition", since I don't have one on my main Lion drive, it made it invisible also. But during the process it failed to finish but has left my USB drive invisible under Lion and nothing that I've tried has been able to undue that. (See Above). What is it that I need to do to get my USB Flash drive visible again under Lion. It is visible under Snow Leopard and it is visible under the lion install utitlties (I made a installer DVD from original internet downloaded Lion installer) but not under disk utilities on lion or the lion desktop! I've reformated under both the above(Snow Leopard & Installer utilities) were I had access to the USB Drive but that didn't undue whatever Apple does to make the recovery partition and my USB Drive invisible because once I boot back into Lion, it's still not there! So the $64,000 question is how do I get my USB Flash drive visible again under Lion?
Hope this help you to understand my situration.
Ian

2012 iMac 27" fails to boot AND wake from sleep

Hi all,
My 2012 iMac has recently started giving my trouble when booting and waking from sleep.
When booting - A normal power up results in the apple logo screen being stuck, then I have to hold down the power button for a few seconds until power off, then i power it back up and the computer boots up normally. NOTE: only at the second time does the computer succeed in getting past the apple logo screen to the sign in screen.
Waking from Sleep - When ever the mac goes to sleep he doesn’t seem to be able to wake up. Usually stuck on a black screen with just the spinning wheel shown. At times i waited more then an hour to see if he can get passed the black screen but in vain.
Other then that the mac works fine.
Both issues started roughly two weeks ago and roughly at the same time.
My mac is mostly used for work, I'm familiar with computers so I am trying to be extra careful with installing weird applications but you could never know..
SPEC:
Late 2012 iMac 27'' - 3.4 Ghz i7.
16GB RAM.
1TB Fusion drive.
2GB NVIDIA GTX 680MX
Wired keyboard and a Magic mouse.
Mountain Lion 10.8.5 (Updated and backed up on a regular basis)
Things I've tried:
Boot to Recovery and Repair Disk/Permissions.
Safe Boot.
SMC reset.
PRAM reset.
* The first two produced a single case of a normal start up, but after a shut down the problem remains.
Any ideas/thoughts/help would be much appriciated,
Thanks in advance,
Idan.

Bump.

I want to dual boot Windows 8 on my 20-inch, Mid 2007 iMac, from an external USB drive.

I want to dual boot Windows 8 on my 20-inch, Mid 2007 iMac, from an external USB drive. The internal drive is completely dead, it doesn't even show up in Disk Utility. I'm running 10.8.2 from the external drive. When I start Boot Camp Assistant, at the Introduction page, when I press the continue button nothing happens. Do I have to have internal drive to run Boot Camp Assistant? Can anyone provide me with the steps to dual boot, with his setup? Thanks in advance!

Hi maczimillon,
Only follow these steps, it works for my:
Open "System Information" and note your "Boot ROM Version" (some like MBP51.007E.B06)
Navigate to "Utilities" in Finder and open the package contents of -BootCampAssistant.app- with right click. Duplicate the "Info.plist" file to the Desktop e.g. and open that with Text Editor.
You must locate the keys "DARequiredROMVersions"and "USBBootSupportedModels"
Add new strings with the information of your machine under booth keys (step 1), always respect the format, such as: <string>MBP51.007E.B06</string> for the frist key and <string>MBP51</string> for the second key.
Save changes and replace the original plist file (it may ask you to enter admin pass)
If you proceeded correctly you will see the checkbox "Create a Windows 7 USB install disk" enabled in Boot Camp Assistant.
Then you can follow the usual Boot Camp installation using your WIN8 DVD iso image . The assistant program will proceed resizing your disk partition and installing necessary drivers for your iMac.
I strongly recomends you to use thirld party's bootloaders like rEFInd (rEFIt) because of the Apple SMC versions of some old machines should not be able to boot properly from external devices like USB drives.

Boot iMac from external DVD drive

Hi guys!
I need to boot my iMac to my system disc using an external DVD drive (USB).
I put the DVD in the drive and it shows up in Prefs as a bootable disc but when I select it and tell it to restart it gives me the error beep. I've tried rebooting and holding down "option" but the system disc in the external doesn't show up.
I'm on 10.3.9 on a 17" G5 iMac 1.8GHz. All ancient history I know but I really only use it for surfing the web and iTunes. I'm trying to upgrade to 10.5 but I need to get it to boot to the DVD drive using the original system disc first.
I've checked into firmware updates and done tons of searches but I can't see why this Mac won't boot from a USB drive. Am I missing something?
Thank you!!

Intel Macs can boot from USB external drives (including optical drives) just fine. It's the older PowerPC Macs that usually need external drives to be FireWire, in order for it to be bootable.
You may want to look at Mac-oriented vendor OWC to see what they have
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/optical-drives/

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

Can I boot a Windows OS on my iMac from an external HDD?

I have two hard disk drives:
One is inside of my 2009 iMac, running leopard. Also on my internal drive is a Windows OS partition, currently running windows 7. One is a WD 1TB external HDD, which I boot Mountain Lion off of. The thing is, I'm running out of room on my internal hard disk drive. Since it is entirely possible to boot Mountain Lion from my external HDD, would it be a good bet that I can make my iMac do the same for a Windows OS? Or is this not the case?

Microsoft does not allow a installation of any version of Windows on an EHD. This is not an OS X or iMac issue,it's strictly with MS Windows.
However, some people have developed hacks to make installing Windows on an EHD possible, the keyword is hacks so you are left on your own to find out how to do it and support it.
Sorry for the discouraging news but unfortunately that's how it is.
As a work around I'd recommend moving large libraries to another EHD, examples of large libraries are iTunes, iMovie & iPhoto. Apple provides instructions on how to do this, you can find them at:
iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD
iMovie: How to move the Library to an EHD
iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD
If you make these moves then you can do a standard installation of Windows on your iMac using either Boot Camp or virtualization software such as Parallels or Fusion.

Booting an iMac from a PowerMac??

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