IMac G5 won't startup

My iMac G5 (no isight) got a "please restart" error, after which it refused to reboot, going grey, the blue, then stopping. I cleared the PRAM - no luck. I can get the thing started in safe mode (holding down shift key), but not in non-safe made. I was running 10.4.10, but I decided to reinstall 10.4, which came which my installation disks, but it still doesn't work.
I have run disk & permissions repair and have fixed all problems. Disk repair said there was a bitmap problem but fixed it.
When I try to boot up from the HD, I get a grey screen with a flywheel, then it goes blue, after a while I get a mouse arrow and then...nothing.
Help!
Thanks.
rj

Hello heijmen
Assuming you have already considered the good suggestions above, your ability to start in safe mode but not in normal mode could also indicate a possible hardware or software conflict.
Have you tried disconnecting all peripherals to see if you can then start normally?
Have you added any third-party AV or beta software that might be disabled when you start in Safe Mode?
Additionally, you should verify that you have considered everything relevant from Isolating issues in Mac OS X?
If you still cannot resolve your problem, it would be helpful if you can recall whether any hardware changes, new software, or updates occurred near the time your problem began.
EZ Jim
PowerBook 1.67 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.10) G5 DP 1.8 External iSight

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I'm thinking power supply issues ... is the power supply replaceable? I have an older iMac (233) which I can cannibalise if necessary.
Thanks

When my 333 MHz iMac started to do this, it was the analog video board. There's a part on there called the flyback transformer that fails. It could also be the power supply or even a dead PRAM battery. Here's a simple way to narrow down the possibilities.
Remove the bottom plastic panel. There is an internal video cable that connects to the "carrier" with the motherboard, drives, and CPU card. Disconnect that cable, and with that cable disconnected, start the iMac. You won't see any video, but if the iMac "sounds" like it is starting up normally, then the problem is most likely the analog video board. [You can shut down normally by pressing the power button once and the pressing enter.]
If that is the case, or even if it is the power supply board, you can do something that is easier than "cannibalizing." If you have previously upgraded RAM, you should know how to remove the internal "carrier" that holds the drives, motherboard, and CPU card. Just remove it (the whole carrier assembly) from both the 333 and 233 and swap them. I'm assuming that the 233 is otherwise working, of course. There are a few things different, such as no IrDA in the 333, but the 233-333 iMac "bodies" are otherwise interchangeable.
If the 233 is not working properly so you can't to the "simple" swap, please post back. Most of the component parts are interchangeable, but not all.

IMac G4 won't startup beyond spinning disc

I have a 20-inch iMac G4 running latest OSX. Following a hard shutdown, the computer now won't start up beyond the grey screen with Apple logo and spinning disc to get to the login screen. After 2-3 minutes of sitting and waiting, it automatically shuts itself off again.
I have tried the following already:
1) Reset PRAM (up to 4 chimes before releasing);
2) Reset PMU;
3) Boot from OS9 startup CD, OSX startup CD and Norton Utilities CD: disks spin but same end result;
The next suggestion in the Apple document suggests taking it in for repair (ouch). Does anyone have any other suggestions before I take that final costly step?

Sometimes, you get lucky.
If you unplug the machine for a few hours, then plug it in and try starting
it up, and if it chimes, see if holding the Shift key down can get you into
SafeBoot/login in OSX 10.4.x.
Did you normally dual boot the computer using the System Preference
panel to make that happen, before you had this issue? Or did you normally
use OS9 as a Classic9 appendage to OSX; without dualbooting into it?
There is a difference; and that could cause the system to balk or fail.
But it sounds like a startup disk failure. Were you able to boot from the
Tiger installer disc#1 and see if you could repair the hard drive by using
the "disk repair" feature in Disk Utility from the booted Installer?
There are some pages in Apple Support online documentation referring to
failures to start such as these; I don't have any bookmarked but recall
part of the troubleshooting procedure did include trying several things.
And resetting the PRAM is not a likely candidate in this situation; but
can't do any harm. There may be damages to the boot volume on the
hard disk drive, or some corruption that may need fixing.
[You could try an archive and install of OSX 10.4.x from the
booted installer disc#1 if nothing else; if you can boot from it.]
Norton Utilities for Macintosh (OS9/X version) is suspect, in that it can
do more harm than good to the OSX system on an unpartitioned HDD.
If you haven't used a better 3rd party Disk Utility; it may help.
A tiny printable guide about what to do when a Mac won't start is available
from here: http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/mymac_wontstart.html
Checking Apple Support for matches to "grey screen" at startup may also
give you some ideas. Having a bootable clone or using FireWire TDM to a
suitable second Mac to see if the drive is OK and to try a repair using
disk utilities in the machine are other ideas. Even trying the PMU reset
again, may be helpful. Other suggestions exist; narrowing the field is a
part of troubleshooting and fact-finding. I say, pull out all the stops...
And if nothing else, plan a trip to the service tech as the last resort... per Apple's suggestion.
Searching for other ideas led this to be posted after a later reply.
Sounds like it needs tech help if no boot discs work and you
have no external clone on FireWire to try and boot from. - Sorry.

IMac G5 – Won't startup except in Safe Mode (10.5.5). Otherwise Blue Screen

I’ve had my iMac (pre-iSight) for about 3 years now and up until recently never had any major problems with it, despite using it for about 12 hours per day, every day.. A couple of minor problems however had developed, but several months ago and didn’t seem to affect the system:
(1) Software update stopped working (had to download & install updates manually) &
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A couple of days ago I decided to try and fix the problems by erasing my startup disk (after backing up all my data of course) and re-installing 10.5 from the installation DVD and then bringing the system up to date. At the time I did this I hadn’t upgraded or installed any new software for several weeks.
For about one day after that it worked fine. The only ‘alarming’ thing that I noticed during that day was that whilst playing a movie the CPU temperature rose to about 89 C. (I use Temperature Monitor). I read somewhere that the CPU temperature should not exceed 85 for this model and that if it did the system would either shutdown or go to sleep, so I was surprised to see it go as high as 89 (assuming that the right temperature was being reported) before it went to sleep. However, even after that it, it started up correctly a couple of times.
Since then it will only boot in Safe mode, and when it does it carries on working indefinitely without any problems. The only thing that I lose in safe mode which seems odd – in addition to all the things that I know I should lose – is Audio. The preferences panel says: no input, output devices attached (ie not even the ones built-in).
If I try a normal start up, the system will go through the grey screen, apple logo, spinning ‘cog’ etc and then almost always go to a blue screen where it stays put. There is a black cursor in the top left corner which, when I try to move it, duplicates itself so that I end up with 2 cursors – one which moves and one which stays in the top left corner.
On very rare occasions (about 1 time in 20) during a normal startup the system will get past the blue screen and to my desktop (in fact this happened several times consecutively before I got to the point where I could only startup in Safe Mode). However, moving the cursor into the menu bar or into the dock would result in the whole screen freezing – the cursor would move, but nothing else would happen). Also I would see that several pixels were ‘missing’ from the desktop. The desktop is normally solid green, but I would see 3 or 4 red and black pixels.
I’ve studied all the forum topics that even remotely resemble my problem and tried just about everything I can think of including:
1. Resetting SMU & PRAM (repetitively)
2. Running the Apple Hardware Test – All tests passed
3. Replacing the PRAM battery
4. Check that the fans are working (I can hear them and when I take the back off, both fans spin)
5. Erased the disk again, installed the OS from the installation DVD, so that there is no third party software on the system. (and then tried a normal boot both with the original 10.5.1 and 10.5.5 after applying the combo update).
6. I have several external disks with several copies of the OS on various partitions, including a 10.4.11, but trying to boot from any of those ends with the same result. I can only boot in safe mode, other wise I get a blue screen (or very rarely it will squeak through to the desktop & then immediately freeze).
Always the same result – safe boot only.
From reading through the various topics, I get the feeling that my problem may be related to the graphics card, but if that is the case I don’t understand why the system will always boot in safe mode and then run without any problems all day. It even allows me to play movies: very jerky (and no sound), both when I move the QT window and the images themselves, but it still plays.
Any thoughts on what the problem might be (other than fatal) would be greatly appreciated. Or an explanation why, if it is the graphics card, the system will continue working after safe boot.
I’ve copied out the system details from Profiler that I think are relevant below.
All the ‘x’’s in the the ROM revision for the ATI Radeon card look a little odd – never seen that before and I don’t know how long its been there.
Model Name: iMac G5
Model Identifier: PowerMac8,2
Processor Name: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 1
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.5f1
Serial Number: W8539……
ATI Radeon 9600:
Chipset Model: ATY,RV351
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
Slot: AGP
VRAM (Total): 128 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x4150
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-xxxxx-117
Displays:
iMac:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 1440 x 900
Depth: 32-bit Color
Built-In: Yes
Core Image: Software
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Not Supported
Display Connector:
Status: No display connected
Many thanks for your help

I had a very similar problem with my 20" iMac G5 ALS running 10.4.11. It began with random freezing inside the OS and intermittent slow booting, but quickly progressed (over a matter of days) to hanging at the blue screen before the logon window, just as you described.
I too, found that booting in Safe Mode was successful. I ruled out the airport card by manually installing that kernel extension in Safe Mode. A check of the logs pointed to "ATY" which I've since found out is a reference to the ATI drivers, which brought me to this post.
At least on my system--and I have tested this on Tiger (10.4 and 10.4.11) and Leopard (10.5 and 10.5.6), the only .kext that needs to be removed / renamed is ATIRadeon9700.kext. My preferred method of doing this is to drop to the terminal and type:
sudo mv /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon.kext /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon.kext.disabled
This preserves the relevant permissions and ownership, which you'd otherwise have to reset manually if you copy the file elsewhere and then delete the original in the Finder, and then want to restore it to its original condition, BTW:
sudo chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon.kext
sudo chown -R 0:0 /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon.kext
Any OS X update will replenish the file, so you should be at the ready to reboot into Safe Mode the first time and rename the file again.
The downside to all this is that the video acceleration doesn't work, so graphics operations are slow and jerky, but at least everything else seems to be okay, in my case anyway.
Popping open the case did indeed reveal four bulging capacitors. I bit the bullet and purchased some replacements, part number 647-UHN0J182MPD from Mouser:
http://mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?qs=pjJ%252bhmlZec6zHXGt6EoiHw%3d%3d
Although I wasn't looking forward to desoldering my logic board, I wasn't real hopeful that I'd have success getting the local Apple shop to replace it under warranty either. I did find some helpful information on performing the fix yourself:
http://jimwarholic.com/2008/07/how-to-repair-apple-imac-g5.php
And I do want to be able to sell this thing for at least a little cash to help offset the cost of a new quad-core iMac, whenever they're released.
Fortunately, for me, the service tech at the Genius Bar at the local Apple store agreed to fix it under the power and video extended warranty, even though it was slightly outside of the warranty period, due to the fact that I had brought it in about a year ago and had the power supply replaced under the same warranty.
I almost didn't bother to bring the machine in because it's a real nasty day here today, and I figured they'd just tell me "That'll be $800 to fix it," and I'd end up doing surgery on the logic board anyway in addition to carrying the thing up and down the steps to my condo. Boy am I glad I did, though. Apple customer service rocks.

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My iMac does not boot properly since I installed the recent security update. All I get is the circle slash symbol. Anyone have a solution?

Hi Carlos
Slip in the OS X DVD that came with your iMac, startup your iMac on the DVD, then open Disk Utility and Repair your Macintosh HD startup volume.
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Imac won't startup

My imac won't startup only apple on gray screen and spinning gear. what can I do to make it work. I was using techtool to optimize and on restart it showed up with a can't find finder, it seemed to be stuck in operating system 9.0. I normally start up in 10.

hi there--
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Originally Posted by gleahy
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JoeyV325 wrote:
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IMac G5 won't startup

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