Boots from disc, but doesn't recognize hard drive

I've got an 800mhz G4 iMac and it won't start up. It boots really slowly into the blue screen and then never passes that point. It's just a blue screen. I can move the mouse around, but nothing else happens and there's nothing for the mouse to manipulate.
It will boot from the optical drive and I'm trying to reinstall Panther (can't find Tiger upgrade discs...blast). But when it gets to the point in the installation where it asks which drive to install on, it gives me no options.
Is the HD dead? Anything I can do? Thanks for all your help in advance.

Try things in Apple doc.#106464 for your startup issue.
Also, try using Disk Utility to repair your startup disk (hard drive) as shown in Dr.Smokes Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption. Smokes link will help walk you thru it. You will need the Tiger disk to do this if you have Tiger installed. If your Panther disk is a 10.3.9 version, it will repair a Tiger installation. 10.3.9 only though.
Let us know what errors DU reports and if it was able to repair them.
Try these things before a re-install. You can try things in Apple doc.#106214; run fsck-you can run a repair with out the disk this way.
Cheers!
DALE

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Mac G5 Won't boot. Won't boot from reinstall disc, doesn't recognize hard drives.

Hello everyone,
I have a problem with my 2005 G5 and I've tried desperately to fix it over the past couple days.
It started with my G5 oddly booting up to OSX Leopard and missing numerous key features such as the dock, the abillity to restart/shut down from the menu, and I was also unable to drag icons around on the desktop. Though, weirdly enough, some programs would still launch.
My goal this week was to reinstall the OS to see if it would fix the problem. I tried numerous times to reinstall from boot via CD while holding C at startup. Also tried reinstall from an external harddrive, and USB, to no avail. I hold down option, and it doesn't detect the internal hard drive. I put in a new 500GB hard drive, still doesn't detect it, nor does it detect the install disc, USB, or external HD.
Since putting in a new harddrive, sometimes the computer will not go past a black screen, but occasionally sometimes will get a grey screen. Fans start spinning like crazy at this point.
So to recap, thus far: I removed the old hard drive and put in a new one, switched around ram, reset PRAM, took out and put back in the video card, tried to reinstall from CD. Still the same results, unable to boot past a grey or black screen, and unable to re-install the OS.
My only conclusion is that it could be a bad logic board.
Does anyone have any insight on this, or agree with my hypothesis? If so, I'll likely pick up a new one off ebay and have a go at installing it.

Is the External drive USB or Firewire? G5s won't see/boot USB drives as a rule?
Do you have another Mac around with Firewire?
Might be time to replace the PRAM Battery, 4 years is close to their lifespan, far less if ever without AC power, & can cause strange startup problems...
See which one your G5 has...
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/CR2032/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/BAA36VPRAM/
Have you done a PRAM reset, CMD+Option+p+r...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
Does it boot into Open Firmware with CMD+Option+o+f ?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42642
reset-nvram (press Enter)
set-defaults (press Enter)
reset-all (press Enter)

Boot from DVD...doesn't recognize hard drive

Hello all,
Hopefully someone can help me out. I just replaced my 160GB 7200rpm hard drive with a Hitachi 200GB 7200rpm hard drive, put it all back together, booted up from the DVD, went to select a destination for a clean install, but the hard drive doesn't show up. Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
17" 2.4GHz Mac Book Pro w/ 4GB of RAM
Trying to install OS 10.4.9

Try a Parameter RAM reset ?
Hold down apple/option/p/r keys at Boot and wait for three chimes before releasing the keys
(Keep the install DVD in the drive while doing this)

Mac OS 9 doesn't recognize hard drive

I have an iMac G3 from the summer of 2001, running OS X 10.4.11. I would like to run Mac OS 9 on it, but when I boot from my 9.2.1 retail CD (white with orange 9) and open the Installer, it shows a blank gray box where I should be able to select the hard disk to install to. The option to proceed is grayed out, but if I click "Options" and check to "Clean Install" I can proceed. When it tries to check the hard disk for errors, it says it can't check it. The hard drive is formatted to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)."

On the other hand, if you want to use OS 9 as Classic under OS X only
(a non-bootable situation, where you can run OS 9 apps only in Classic)
you could grab a copy of OS9 System and OS9 Applications from an
installed OS 9.1 or Later running computer.
I found that my un-used iBook G4's second dvd has a nice OS 9.2.2
installer on there which runs under OSX to provide this version as a
Classic 9 in OSX. It also will work to install a full bootable system to
an external drive, that can later be used as a Boot OS 9.2.2 in an
older Mac. (No drivers are required to install it as Classic in OS X.)
You need not format the drive to run an OS9 installer if you can
get the system and its application file/folders via another route.
And if you do not need a boot OS9 system from the internal HDD.
An external drive could do that job, and OS9 can run from it, too.
There are options... If you had a later OS X version, there also is
a utility which can partition a working OSX computer's hard drive
and then you could see see about installing OS9 on a partition
where OS9 drivers could exist. This is almost not worth it, if you
can drag-drop the OS9 working system parts into an OS X Mac.
And just use Classic. There are limits in what OS9 can do as Classic
and so some users require the bootable OS9 full system for some
applications or older apps that won't work well under OS X's Classic.
Working with disc images, you could get an OS9 system saved to
a flash drive and load it into an older Mac that has no DVD drive;
and move it in without an installer, if Classic would be adequate.
The installer for a bootable OS9 system and that boot volume
requires the OS9 Driver; but a Classic system in OSX does not.
Hopefully the options may be helpful.
PS: the computer, if the one noted in your signature line, can
use much more RAM for OS X (including Classic) to run well.
In any event...
Good luck & happy computing!

Time Machine doesn't recognize hard drive

I have installed Leopard on my 2.66 GHz PowerMac. I have a 200 GB Maxtor hard drive hooked to it my PowerMacthrough a hub. I have used the hard drive to manually back up files and that works fine. The hard drive shows up in the finder, but it doesn't show up in Time Machine. I have tried restarting several times to no avail.

I have a different issue but this topic seemed the closest in the discussions. Since buying our new 24" iMac with 750GB internal HDD this Winter (and Leopard) I have had Ext TimeMachine HDD issues (loss).
First, I bought a 1Tb WD MyBook - within a week of use as the TimeMachine drive (and a week of good backups as far as I can tell as we browsed the saved contents periodically) the Ext HDD started failing. It was hard to tell what the problem was, but after twice "locking up" and restarting both the drive and the Mac, I am no longer able to "see" the drive in Finder, nor does the drive act like it would (the lights/sounds of the drive at time of mount) like it is being recognized at startup. One last odd thing about this drive, when TM had trouble and "sort of" locked up or slowed down the iMac as it lost the drive, Finder could still see it (I didn't try to move files to/from it though).
Just last week I bought a Maxtor 750GB drive (to replace until I get the WD drive back from warranty) and it lasted only 3 days. Now it, like the WD drive, is not visible. The only difference is that this drive doesn't sound right e.g. if you listen closely I think you can heard the internal mechanism clicking - bearings, drive head etc.? I'm not a HDD expert but I suspect something physical.
I am suspicous that both drives would fail in such a similar way with similar results. The only things common that I can identify now are the following;
-Both drives are firewire (WD FW800 / Maxtor FW400)
-Both drives used as TimeMachine drives only
-Both drives were new
-the location of the drives and iMac are not new - our older iMac and drives used to be mounted in the same location. The old Ext HDD's and iMac have been moved to a new location and they still work fine.
- We have installed the latest Apple software updates as they became available and no other problems noted. However, it was during the last security update the the system locked up (from TimeMachine it appeared) and upon re-boot of the system we were no longer able to "see" that the drive was available.
-Both drives have only been connected to this new iMac
-No other Ext, HDD's have been used with this iMac
Until I get warrant details back from the manufacturer I am concerned what the source of the problems are. Is it two unique HDD's failures and nothing more? Is it TimeMachine? Is it my iMac?
I have invested a lot of time and money into large drives only to have them nothing more than paper weights in less then a week each.
I would love to hear of any suggestions or if others are having similar issues.

HP Laptop doesn't recognize Hard Drive

Hi,
I have a HP 620 (Pentium D 2,3GHz 1GB Ram) and it doesn't recognize the Hard Drive. The battery doesn't seem to work too.
If i try to install Windows, it says that there are no hard drives found. The diagnostic test in the BIOS says the same.
The DVD player is also lousy as **bleep**.
Do you guys have some tips about cause of this problem.
System information screenshot below
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Have you entered the UEFI PC Diagnostics to see if the component tests show the hard disk?
Had you considered removing the original hard disk, then reseating it and trying again to see if it is recognized as beong installed?
You can also put another hard disk in its place to see if it is recognized.
Is your notebook still in warranty? warranty status
****Please click on Accept As Solution if a suggestion solves your problem. It helps others facing the same problem to find a solution easily****
2015 Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience Consumer

Can't boot from either of 2 external Seagate hard drives

Over a year ago, I purchased two external Seagate drives. One is FireWire 800/400. The other is an eSATA 500GB connected to an eSATA PCI card. I have not been able to boot from either one of them after placing a "bootable" copy of my "main" internal hard drive on each using SuperDuper! It isn't a SuperDuper! problem because I have another internal hard drive with two partitions. I have placed the same kind of bootable copy on each of the internal drive's partitions and they boot just fine. The external drives are the problem. After a lot of back and forth with Seagate, they concluded that my boot ROM is too early (too old) and does not support booting from their drives. Their lab has a newer dual PowerMac G5 and it does boot their drives. I was told that updating boot ROM was not possible. Both external drives function very well except for the fact that neither will boot. I just read elsewhere in this forum that boot ROMs _can be updated_. Is this true? Search on "Boot ROM" and include the quotes to see the references to updating boot ROM. Is this possible with my machine? See below for boot ROM version. Thanks in advance for any info you can provide.

Hi-
Blaming the boot ROM is a first. Haven't heard that one before.
Boot ROM can be updated, though it would have to be an update provided by Apple. There are no G5 updates beyond 5.1.8 (that my searches reveal, anyhow).
I think it is best to look elsewhere for the problem....
What are the Seagate series numbers? 7200.10?
What is the Seagate firmware version?
What is the make and model of the SATA PCI controller?
What is the chipset, make and model of the firewire drive housing?

Deleted account from Mail but messages remain on hard drive

I am trying to clear space on my old macbook before passing it off to my wife. I am running Maverick. In mail I deleted 5 of 6 mail accounts I had. But when I ran Grand Perspective, all GBs of the stored emails from those accounts are still there. How do I get rid of them? 3 accounts were Gmail. All were IMAP.
Thanks for the help.

Create a clone on an external disk with either SuperDuper or CCC. Then erase your old MacBook, re-install the system. Then, the first time you boot in Setup Assistant, you'll be prompted to migrate. Migrate from the clone and only choose to migrate Applications.

Remote Disc Can't recognize Blank disc, but it does recognize other discs. I am trying to burn something from my itunes on my mac mini to a blank disc on my windows computer. What could be wrong?

Remote Disc Can't recognize Blank disc, but it does recognize other discs. I am trying to burn something from my itunes on my mac mini to a blank disc on my windows computer. What could be wrong?
I can see other discs such as music and stuff so I know I have installed it correctly but how come I can't see the blank disc that I need to burn?

You can't burn discs remotely, you can only read data discs remotely (i.e. you cannot play movie DVDs either).
Either copy the files to the remote computer or get an external drive.

My MacBook pro won't recognize hard drive I put in it. It boots only to a white screen unless I boot to my recovery USB. If I do that then I can select my USB and my external time machine drive in the disk utility, so no problems there. But what do you

My MacBook pro won't recognize hard drive I put in it. It boots only to a white screen unless I boot to my recovery USB. If I do that then I can select my USB and my external time machine drive in the disk utility, so no problems there. But what do you think it is? It won't recognize any hard drive I put in the machine, so might it be the sata cable?

Boot the Recvoery USB, use Disk Utility to select the internal drive makers namea and size on the left.
Now select erase and select the midde option and click erase, it will take a bit to complete but it's best for the drive.
Now select Partiton tab, click the big box and Options: GUID and then Format: OS X Extended journaled and click apply.
Quit and you should be able to install OS X now with your Apple ID and password.
see
http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/08/lion-recovery-disk-assistant-tool-makes-external- lion-boot-recovery-drives/

After OS Upgrade, Computer will No Longer Boot from Disc, Enter T-Disc Mode

I purchased the Leopard update about a week ago and proceeded to install it (upgrade option) on my MacBook Pro previously running Tiger. After this update, I no longer seem to be able to boot from a disc(c on startup), enter target disc mode(t on startup), enter single user mode(command s on startup), basically anything that requires hitting a key on boot. In short, the operating system seems to override any of those commands and just loads regardless of what I press.
How can I fix this?? I fear that if my mac suddenly dies, I won't be able to fix it with archive and install via the CD, since I can't boot from it. I also won't be able to recover my files with target disc mode or anything.
For more in-depth details:
-My hard drive does have an open firmware password- it was recommended as part of the undercover anti-theft program that I use. Although I can tell putting the password on was a mistake, since I've read that single user mode is no longer accessible with this password active. I don't think this is affecting my inability to boot from disc or target disc mode though, as I was always able to do this with Tiger, even with the firmware password active.
-I have tried booting from other discs, like my old tiger OS disc that came with the laptop- that fails too.
-My Leopard installation was not clean. Like many others, I used the upgrade option and it appeared to work ok- until restart, where I was faced with the blue screen. Since I was unable to boot to single user mode and try removing potential APE files, I let the computer sit for an hour on the blue screen until it finally loaded. Upon getting in, I found that I did not even have APE's installed. I proceeded to reinstall the operating system via an Archive & Install. Upon boot after this reinstall, I still received a blue screen that lasted a long time, and the OS loaded very slow. It did this for a few additional boots afterwards, and has appeared to smooth itself out now, a week later. The OS now loads fine and works alright (from what I can see), but I still can not boot from disc or anything else.
If anyone at all knows a solution for this, it would be much appreciated. I wanted to suspect something like the disc drive going bad, but being that things like the target-disc mode aren't working either- I'm hesitant to believe its just the disc drive. Being that it also happened just as I upgraded to Leopard and faced issues, I have more of a hunch that its something to do with Leopard.
I apologize if this has been answered before, but I've looked all over the site, google, everywhere I could think of and came up with no answer.
Thanks ~Brian

Hi, I have been having the exact same problem with a late 2011 MBP 15 inch. I replaced the hard drive with a samsung SSD 1.5 years ago, along with a samsung SSD in the optical drive. It worked great until the Yosemite upgrade. The MBP seemed to work reasonably well for a few days after the upgrade, but then it started stalling on various programs (spinning beach ball on Mail, Safari, etc). Start-ups were also longer and had a loading bar each time, which was new since the upgrade. I left the MBP to sleep last night and when opening it, it crashed and tried to restart. On restart it loads to the login screen, then after I enter the password it partially loads (based on the loading bar), then shuts off. I removed the SSD and plugged it in with a USG, but that didn't change anything. Here is a picture after using CMD-V before it shuts off.

Satellite P300-1A8 will not boot from disc drive

Hi,
I had a little play with start up programs, partitioning the hard drive and marking as active and deleting programs i thought i did not need.
I obviously had no idea what i was doing!
Laptop will go to toshiba screen then goes blank, i can not boot from the disc drive.
I put the hard drive into another laptop and it works fine.
I put the hard drive of that laptop in the buggered one and that works fine.
How the hell do i put the original one back with it working??
Really really stuck with this!!!!!
Any help would be appreciated.
Only thing i havent tried is the recovery disc but im not paying for one if it wont boot as itl be a waste of money.
Seems like its a compatability problem with cpu and hard drive as they dont want to be friends anymore!!
Thank you in advance

Hi!
Can you boot in the safe mode?
If you dont have a recovery disk, use the Microsoft installation disk and try to boot from it.
And you said that you cant boot from disc drive, did you tried different disks?
Maybe some are not readable or not bootable.
The best way would be a recovery disk. The installation takes a few minutes and you have a clean installation with all drivers and tools from Toshiba.
Bye

MSI NF980-G65 freezes when trying to boot from disc

I just recently purchased and received an MSI NF980-G65 motherboard to work with my AMD Phenom II x6 1055T, but sadly I have had nothing but trouble.
So far the motherboard posts its bios and has the ability to detect any (and all) of my hard drives when I have them plugged in. The hard drive that has Windows installed on it currently informs me that I need to put in my Windows disc and run the repair utility, which makes sense since I was using a completely different motherboard and CPU before.
It is when I try to press any key to boot from disc that the problem arises. When I press a key on my keyboard while that prompt is on screen, the cursor jumps as if I had hit the tab key and does nothing further.
I have a total of three copies of Windows 7 at my disposal to use, two are DVDs I had burned from using my student discount to get them, and one set (32-bit and 64-bit) were in a retail copy of home premium, all of the discs performed the same action. I had tried using different SATA cables, different power adapters, and even different DVD players to try and remedy the situation.
The hard drive with windows is an IDE hard drive, but I have tried my other SATA hard drives just to be sure, none of which fixed the problem.
I have heard briefly about m-flash, but as far as I can tell, it would appear this new motherboard did come with the latest bios version (1.4).

For the boot, I have tried both setting up the DVD player as the initial boot, and I have tried just selecting it in the boot menu.
As per the posting guide, here are more specific information:
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 2.8 GHz, 9.0 MB Total Cache, AM3 Socket
Motherboard: MSI NF980-G65 v. 1.2 bios (I'm going to try and flash this to a later now, I didn't know where to look for it before) , 601-7612-010B1004183389
RAM: G. Skill Ripjaw DDR3-1600 PC3-12800 2gb x 1 until I get this working, then it will be x4
Power Supply: Tagan BZ Series 700W
DVD: Samsung SH-S223 DVD burner with Lightscribe
HDD: Western Digital 250GB IDE drive

I have a white Macbook 2009 on OSX Lion. It came with the OSX Snow Leopard CD, I erased the HDD and am trying to install the OSX from disc but am getting "cannot install OSX from disc" message. What can I do?

I have a white Macbook 2009 on OSX Lion. It came with the OSX Snow Leopard CD, I erased the HDD and am trying to install the OSX from disc but am getting "cannot install OSX from disc" message. What can I do?
I got the macbook from a friend a few years ago and it already had OSX Lion installed. Whenever it boots from the Snow Leopard disc it says it cannot install from disc. Is there anythingI can do or should I take it to an Apple store to get them to boot OSX Lion for me?

Insert your Snow Leopard disc and restart, press and hold the C key as soon as you hearthe startup chime, hold C until you see the Apple Logo. When your computer starts up you'll be at the first install screen, choose your language and click the arrow to go to the next screen. This screen has a menu bar, from the Utilities menu select Disk Utility, select your hard drive, this is the one with the manufacturers name or numbers, click the partition tab and then delete any existing partitions by selecting them and clicking the minus. In the drop down box select one partition and click apply. Name your hard drive and click erase. When it's done quit DU and go back to the installer, install Snow Leopard. When the installer is done and the computer is back up and running run Software Update to get to 10.6.8

Please can someone tell me why I cannot reinstall my upgrade from lightroom 4 (lightroom 3 installed off disc with serial no) my hard drive crashed, and I am trying to get lightroom 3; 4 and 5 back on so that I can link my catalogues and continue work. I

Please can someone tell me why I cannot reinstall my upgrade from lightroom 4 (lightroom 3 installed off disc with serial no) my hard drive crashed, and I am trying to get lightroom 3; 4 and 5 back on so that I can link my catalogues and continue work. I cannot install lightroom 5 until the upgrades from 4 are on the pc, (lightroom 3 installed off disc but 4 is a copy of the upgrade download I got when I bought it) These serial no's are legit and are registered under my account with adobe, but it still gives me the Big Red Cross when I put my serial no in! Please can someone help. I am at a loss. Thx Heidi

Please can someone tell me why I cannot reinstall my upgrade from lightroom 4 (lightroom 3 installed off disc with serial no) my hard drive crashed, and I am trying to get lightroom 3; 4 and 5 back on so that I can link my catalogues and continue work. I cannot install lightroom 5 until the upgrades from 4 are on the pc, (lightroom 3 installed off disc but 4 is a copy of the upgrade download I got when I bought it) These serial no's are legit and are registered under my account with adobe, but it still gives me the Big Red Cross when I put my serial no in! Please can someone help. I am at a loss. Thx Heidi

Boots from disc, but doesn't recognize hard drive

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