IMac G5 fails to boot when cold

Normally, I keep my iMac on all the time to download podcasts and bit torrent stuff and for the most part have had no problems with this. I went home for the holidays and turned it off for 2 weeks. When I got back and turned it on, I got the "Ta da !" (or whatever its called) followed by the Apple logo and the spinner for a few seconds and then it shut off. I tried again and again and it kept doing this. I did notice that it seemed to stay on a hint longer each time. Eventually, I would get the login screen background before power off. Finally after at least a dozen attempts, I got the login screen and then everything seemed to work as expected. I ran the TechTool Deluxe software that came with my AppleCare plan and it said everything passed (except the extended hard drive tests). I saw a posting about someone having a similar problem with their Power Mac G5, but there was no explicit solution given in the thread. Everything seems to be running correctly now and I've still got about a year on my APP so there's no rush, but if there is a problem, I want to fix it. I'd rather not abandon my iMac at the repair shop for 2 weeks and then have them tell me that there's nothing wrong. Has anyone else had this problem? Suggestions? Thoughts? New hard drive?
iMac G5, Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)
iMac G5, Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I would not wait too long to get it looked at. could be the hard drive or it could be early signs of a power supply going bad. If it were me I would do a complete backup now and go ahead and take it to the repair center. I understand not wanting to be without it but it also makes more sense to be without it by choice and not after a complete failure.

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The Mac Guy 12,
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Try this next if you have not already.
littleshoulders [:-)

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Thanks for the help Froggy. Here is the information you asked for:
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Hi all,
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Bump.

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Hey everyone,
I have a strange problem with my MacBook Pro mid 2009 13" running OSX Mavericks. For more than a year I have trouble booting my laptop. A 'cold' start (a fresh boot) usually ends with the prohibition sign on a grey back ground (starting in verbose mode results in the error message that the main drive could not be found). So far so strange.
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This isn't a direct answer to your issue but have you considered installing Wine so you can run the occasional windows app directly in OSX? It's a much more elegant solution IMHO. This avoids restarting all the time with Bootcamp and avoids crashing all the time (and the security risks) with Windows running.

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Hello,
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If the disk image or time machine backup was from a older version of OS X then what was currently installed restoring that image/TM backup may have corrupted the newer version of OS X.
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I work in a school. We have a number of Mac devices. One being an iMac Model No: A1312 running OS X. Today this machine failed to boot – instead it started up but after about a minute of a screen with the Apple and the spinney cog wheel it dumped to a dark grey screen with an active cursor and responsive keys on the keyboard (the beep was heard when pressing the spacebar for example) but no log on box or other screen activity.
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Any suggestions as to what’s wrong please fellow Forum members?

Thanks for your lone response @rkaufmann87 I'd have thought more responses were offered - perhaps an indication that this is a rare issue.
There are no peripheral devices connected - the KB and mouse are wireless and clearly communicating with the device well. I've tried the suggested resolutions without the LAN cable connected and as stated in my OP with the LAN connected (from two different locations) can access the support pages etc. and indeed the machine has spent in excess of 4 hours powered up and twice reinstalling the OS X. All seems to go well but then after the restart up comes the standard start screen with the Apple Icon and the spinning cog wheel then after a minute or so it dumps out to a darker screen with just the mouse cursor visible. The mouse moves the cursor and pressing various keys on the KB brings beep responses.
As a School Network Manager, working with a very tight school budget, I'd rather get the machine sorted with Forum help and my in house effort if at all possible. The last iMac job I put out to a recommended Apple repair Workshop was for a replacement screen to a still under warranty new 21 inch iMac and that cost about half the value of the machine to get done - ouch!

IMAC fails to boot up

My IMAC fails to boot up. The IMAC powers up, the white backround with the Apple and the windmill spins completes, the system goes to the blue screen, and then a overlay fills the screen with a power button image in gray appears in the center of the monitor with text overlay in several languages instructing me to restart the computer. When I do this the same thing occurs. Can you help.

I believe you are experiencing a "Kernel Panic"....this link will explain what it is and hopefully how to resolve it
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IBook G4 fails to boot with internal HD installed, works when removed

The short version: My iBook started failing to boot via any method (gray screen) and the boot menu (Option during startup) would freeze. Replaced HD, things were better. Six months into new HD, nearly the same symptoms appear again. Removed HD, now running off different HD via FireWire.
The long version–
Back in late 2008-12, my iBook started failing to boot up. Usually it would refuse to boot from any source. Booting the internal disk (10.4.11) would get to a gray screen without any logo and stay there. Holding down Option, the boot menu would come up, but it would usually freeze before it displayed any volumes. Booting from CD (AHT, or OS install disc) would fail in nearly the same way as booting from the internal drive. Target Disk Mode would start, but once the other machine tried to access the drive, the FireWire logo would stop moving and the drive would never show up on the other computer. Very rarely, the machine would get a bit further through one of the boot mechanisms, but it usually froze while booting or just after login.
This machine has gone through three logic boards in the past, so I suspected that was the problem again. I took it to a local Genius Bar and the Genius explained that it was probably the hard drive. He said that sometimes, depending on the way the drive fails, it can "take out" other parts of the system due to drawing too much current, etc.
I was a bit skeptical, but it was going to be much cheaper to replace the HD myself than it would be to send it in for a MLB replacement. So I ordered a new HD (80G) and a USB-to-ATA/SATA adapter. I hoped that I would be able to use the adapter to savlage a bit more data off the drive (it originally failed right before a backup!).
After extracting the HD (40G), I connected it to the USB adapter and was able to access the drive just fine. I used another machine to run another backup from the recently removed HD (40G) to one of my FireWire backup drives and proceeded to put the iBook back together with the new HD (80G).
Once it was all back together, the new HD worked fine. I was able to restore the recent backup from my FireWire drive to the internal, and it worked fine. The only oddity I noticed was that the new drive was apparently trying to sleep several times a minute. I used smartctl (installed via MacPorts) to adjust the power management setting on the drive, and that seemed to help. I also started running smartd (also via MacPorts) to better monitor the new drive.
Recently, a bit more than six months after the new HD was installed, the new HD started showing errors in the system.log. I never found any errors in the logs after the previous HD failed (even though I could look through the logs just fine with the drive attached through the ATA-USB adapter).
Jul 2 18:04:40 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 2 18:33:43 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 0 to 30\n
Jul 3 02:03:42 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 30 to 31\n
Jul 3 03:03:42 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 31 to 32\n
Jul 6 23:33:42 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 32 to 33\n
Jul 7 00:33:42 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 33 to 34\n
Jul 7 12:42:24 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 34 to 36\n
Jul 7 13:17:59 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
+same error message a bit faster than one every 3 seconds+
Jul 7 13:23:00 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 13:33:44 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 36 to 615\n
Jul 7 21:17:05 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:12 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:12 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:12 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:15 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:18 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:21 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:23 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:29 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:18:17 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:19:21 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:19:23 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
I did not notice the errors until the afternoon of the 7th when the problem became evident. The events around 13:00 happened when I was trying to run a backup. The first backup failed in an odd way (when I came back to check on it later that evening, SuperDuper! seemed to have quit running). So I restarted the backup and started looking around in the logs. That is when I noticed the kernel I/O error messages. When I asked smartctl to query the drive, it showed that many errors had been occurring and it displayed the drive's log of the last five or so errors (alas, I did not save this output). Meanwhile the re-run of SuperDuper! was having problems again. It seemed to have hung (no SDAgent or SDCopy processes were running, but the main UI was still there). Since the backup was not getting anywhere, I decided to shutdown for a while and try again later.
When I did try again later, I was back in the situation of six months ago. It would not boot at all (no internal, no FireWire, no CD/DVD, boot menu hangs, Target Disk Mode hangs). So, I opened up the system, removed the HD and put it back together without an internal HD. The machine is now able to boot and run from FireWire. Again, the (6 month old, 80G) HD "works fine" via the USB adapter. If SMART were available through the USB adapter, I could check to see if the drive is continuing to have problems. I used SuperDuper! to copy the HD to a volume on my FireWire drive which is how I an now running the system.
Has anyone had any similar problems? Any idea why my iBook seems to be killing/rejecting hard drives? (I say killing because, while the drive is connected internally, it certainly seems to be dying. I say rejecting because once the drive is out of the system, both the drive and the system seem to "recover".) I have read messages there where others report success having their iBook MLB resoldered ("reball"). Has anyone experienced substantially similar issues that were solved with a resolder repair?
Thanks!

I was able to test my “failing” ATA drives in a G4 Mac mini (I had to take the mini apart because its drive had finally failed). I was able to successfully boot the Mac mini with either of my iBook drives installed. Once booted, +Disk Utility+ said that each one's SMART Status was Verified. I used smartctl to pull the full SMART info while I had them installed in the Mac mini.
Since the drives were still “good”, I think this emphasizes that the problem is with the ATA interface on my iBook's logic board. Maybe it is broken, or maybe it just needs to be resoldered. For now I am happy just booting off an external Firewire drive.
BTW, I ended up installing the 6 month old 80G drive in the mini. It has been working OK for 10 days now. As long as it continues to operate normally in the mini, it will serve as evidence that my iBook's HD ATA controller is borked. I just hope the ATA controller is more capable of accepting its fallibility than was HAL.
There is a minor problem with the 80G in the mini in that I am unable to use hdapm to change the aggressive head unloading that the drive suffers. I was able to adjust it with hdapm while it was in my iBook. I am able to adjust it with hdparm under Linux on the mini. Luckily the change I made while booted in Linux "sticks" after rebooting back into Mac OS X (I hear it will be lost if the drive is completely powered off though).

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You've probably tried this, but will it Safe Boot? Restart holding down the Shift key until you see the grey progress bar. You'll need to input your admin password during bootup. If it will boot you can then try to eject the disk using the various suggestions here that you haven't tried already:
http://osxdaily.com/2009/08/28/eject-a-stuck-disk-from-your-mac-dvd-super-drive/
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When i bought this iMac i failed to register correctly and as i am trying to install a printer i need to do this when i am logging on. How can i create new password

When i bought this iMac i failed to register correctly and as i am trying to install a printer i need to do this when i am logging on. How can i create new password

See
http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/24/reset-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-password/ and
http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/19/change-password-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-without-knowin g-current-password/
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Welcome to Apple Support Communities
The display or graphic card are damaged. The only thing you can do is to take your computer to an Apple Store or reseller to get your computer repaired.
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IMac G5 fails to boot when cold

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