Inherited iMac, White screen of death, etc...

Hello, Fairly new to the world of mac.
I have been given a iMac 20" G5 a M9250LL/A...
Looks in good condition, powers up ok. But I get a white screen with a flashing mac folder icon.
Tried resetting the Navram, epram and everything else under the sun...
I installed a new hard drive, a 500GB western digital one. Power up and it still doesn't see it.
I then held down the option key, hopefully it would see it?. no chance...
Boots in Open firmware ok and see's hard drive, etc...
So I tried connecting via a firewire cable from a friends macbook and success, reformatted the drive, installed Snow Leopard and nothing.
nada, zip... starts up on the macbook just fine.
Someone told me that I need to install Tiger first?.. that true?
I've spent a few days trying all kinds of things I've found on youtube and google and drawing a blank here...
Would anyone be able to offer some advice? - I'm a bit confused as I've tried everything!!
Would love to get this machine working, I rather not have to take it to the dump and have to get a 2nd hand windows machine off ebay!!
HELP!!

Hello, Just an update..
Thanks to rccharles and michelpm for your reply's they were very helful. Thank you!
I'm a great believer in recycling and upcycling and it would be an awful shame to see something heading for the dump that would probably only need a few new capacitors for couple of quid...
It was an inherited machine (probably for good reason) and 5 1000uF caps were bad (bulging) TBH, I had nothing to loose and I have a old PC laptop to use should I do a hideous job. Figured I just go for it, besides, it kept me busy between a few shifts at work.
The only electronics I did at school was in the Physics lab and even then, I wasn't really paying much attention. But I'm a believer that anyone can do anything, if they set their mind to it... just take your time and prepare
1) So I got myself onto youtube watched some videos on soldering.
Some good, some hopelessly boring others, mildly disturbing..
2) I bought a soldering kit off ebay for £8 which came with a very helful guide, entitled:
"The basics of Electronics Soldering and Desoldering Guide" by Alan Winstanley.
3) Ordered the capacitor kit off ebay for £8
4) Borrowed a DVD of Leopard.
made a cup of tea, deep breath and then went about desoldering and soldering in the new caps.
20 min job and then reverse of removal, press the power button and a few nervous seconds and it was up and running and installing off the hard drive.
So, basically, what I'm saying is don't junk your machine for the sake of a couple of capacitors.
If I can do it, you definately can!
Total spend:
iMac                       £0.00
Capacitor kit            £8.00
500Gb Hard Drive   £18.00
Bluetooth Card         £5.00
Soldering Iron kit      £8.00
Total:                      £39
Pretty sure you could'nt buy a working iMac for under £40, so I think I did pretty well, all things considered.
This fixed:
Hard Drive not being recognised
Fan sounding like a Hoover
White screen of D E A T H
Found a useful website here:
http://www.ifixit.com/Device/iMac_G5_20%22_Model_A1076
If you are in the situation I was in and had nothing to loose, give it a shot, not only will you learn something, but you'll get the satisfaction of repairing it and breathing new life into an old device.
Cheers!

Similar Messages

IMac white screen of death

When I start up my iMac, I hear the start-up sound and see the white screen, followed by two beeps, then three beeps repeatedly. It will not respond to anything.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.

There's a RAM problem. See here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1547

My late '09 iMac white screen of death- help

Hello to the community.....not happy today with my mac. My name is denyason, from the uk.
It's a 27 " quad core 2.66 ghz intel i5
8gb 1066mhz ddr3
2tb hard drive
It came with no cd and my SuperDrive doesn't work.
I have the latest updates with Os lion as of 9th February 2012.
Turned on mac- stuck on white apple logo screen with spinning gear. So I entered safe mode- pressed shift and load bar springs up on apple logo screen.......does about a quarter then it disappears and nothing happens- stuck with the spinning gear again. This is very disappointing considering I paid nearly 2 grand for this feb 2010. Only 2 years old. What do I do. I only have an 1 tb external hd for backup. If one can't even get to safe mode what do they do? Searches say install cd but I didn't get one with mine?
Help would be great but luckily I recently got an iPad so at least I can use the web.

Is there anyone that can help me? I have tried Resseting the nvram/pram and nothing. Tried shift-command-v and it just stops after a string of text?

Having an intermittent issue where my iMac blanks out on me. On restarting I get bands running down the screen with pixels jumping around, then the white screen of death and nothing... Wouldn't restart all weekend, now fine..? any ideas whats wrong?

Having an intermittent issue where my iMac blanks out on me. On restarting I get several bands running down the screen with pixels jumping around within the bands, then the white screen of death and nothing... This happens intermittently and usually restarts OK. Happened again three days ago and wouldn't restart for two days (again the bands/pixels etc) but now operating fine? Any ideas whats wrong with my iMac and what the solution may be? Also gets very hot from time to time, particularly if I'm playing music/watching youtube/movies for extended periods. Mac is 3.5 years old, running OS X 10.6.8, processor 3.4 GHz i7 memory 8GB 1333 MHz DDR3

If you live near an Apple Store, make a Genius Bar appointment to have the computer tested. Supposedly there is no charge for testing. Use 2nd link if not near an Apple Store or aren’t in the US.
Genius Bar Reservation US
Authorized Service Provider

Imac crashes after 3 weeks!!!! White screen of death-- Hard Drive died!??

Good day fellow Apple-minded,
bought my missus a 27" Imac with a 1TB hard drive in the mighty United of States,just the other day.
I have become quite an Apple fan recently........mainly based on the high reliability compared to the products from Bill Gates and his henchmen.
HOWEVER, I was less impressed when the white "screen of death" appeared the other day while trying to boot up. It was night, so I spent a good few hours in this forum, trying to look for a solution.........before finally surrendering to bed.
The next morning to the Mac-doctor and he confirmed--> the Hard Drive--> R.I.P.
After 3 weeks only!!
Luckily it will be changed under warranty etc, but still--> my question is: how common is this for the Imac?????
FYI: I flew the Imac out of the States, checking it in at the airline desk--> booboo??
Thanks,
MXP 150 Patriot

IMO, mere coincidence. Mechanical and electrical things break. When, no one knows. For HDs, normally within the first couple of months and then years later at their end of life. Since it's being replace under warranty, don't worry.

White screen of death - iMac OSX Lion

I upgraded my 2007 iMac to Lion and after a few days of perfect running the think locked up. When I forced the power off and back on it seemed to be booting fine (chimes, apple logo, disk spinning up and I could hear the drive head seeking) but then it froze up in the "White Screen of death" (WSOD). It was complete lockd up again, and nothing would bring it back. I had to reboot again. And again. Everytime it seems to be ok, but then locks up after it the screen goes white. . I did command option , p r keys with three chimes. I have unplugged it and let it sit. I disconnected all periferals. I reset the SMC. I booted into Single User mode and used unix commands to check the HD. No errors found. I disconnected my wireless Time Capsule.
Note that it appears to be booting fine at first with the useaul Apple Logo. And when I boot into the Single User mode all the text indicates no faults. The display and HD appear fine.
I inserted my original OSX Leopard disk and and tried to boot from it, using the "C" boot process and the Option boot method to manuualy select the DVD. No good. It just went into the WSOD again.
I have no idea what to try next!

RATS!
After ersing (and zeroing) out the HD nothing changed. I still could not completely boot up the install disk. I tried the original Leopard disk, and the Apple Lion USB thumbdrive. Both started the boot process, and gave me the grey Apple logo. But then after a minute or two jumped into the White Screen of Death.
I then replace both RAM chips. No change.
Now I have a brick. A very large and heavy brick.
But the computer will woerk as Target Disk Mode, and it actually goes through a normal boot cycle. That is, I can go into the Single Ud=ser mode and all UNIX command work fine.
Does anyone have any additional ideas of what can cause this?
Peter

2007 intel based iMac has the white screen of death with the mouse visible?? WHATSUP

My 2007 Intel based IMAC has the white screen of death with the mouse cursor as the only visible item. What is up with this? Is this the equivalent of the windows blue screen of death?
Doug

Read the "More Like This" thread links located at the bottom left of this page.

IMac 27" white screen of death

Hello.
I've recently changed HDD in my iMac to OCZ Vertex 2 SSD in a local Apple service. Everything was OK until today. I woke up my iMac from Sleep, it showed the beachball and became frozen and unresponsive. I pressed Power button to switch it off. After that I've pressed Power button again to switch it back on. But... all I could see was a White Screen.
iMac doesn't react on pressing "C", "Shift", "D", "ALT" and other combinations that could help me. I even can't boot using Install Disk. All I can see is a White Screen of Death.
What are the suggestions to my issue?
I'd like to hear any help.

Well, I'm sure that the Apple service who performed the work would have a warranty? I would be contacting them immediately and tell them to fix the problem without cost to you.

Help needed-white screen of death while attempting to migrated files from imac to macbook

Using the migration program on my macbook (about a month old), I rebooted my imac (about a year old) while pressing down the 't' key. Instead of rebooting and bringing up the firewire symbol, I got the white screen of death. Thankfully, I have gotten the imac working again (except I can't get it to recognize my wireless mouse)…but am afraid to try the migration app again for fear of having the same problem and doing irreperable damage......any suggestions for what went wrong the first time and what I should do differently? Also, any ideas on how to get it to recongize my mouse? It has recongized my keyboard with no issue.

Download at www.memtestosx.org
Power on your MBP while holding down the Command and S keys to force Mac OS X to boot into Single User Mode. Once you see a black screen with white text, you can release the key combination. After all the system logging is done scrolling past, type 'memtest all 2' (without the quotes) to test all memory two times. Two passes should be enough to detect any blatant problems, but I wouldn’t hesitate to let it run for hours on end if I suspected an intermittent memory problem (memtest all). When complete, you should be greeted with “All tests passed” if your RAM is in good condition. If your system locks up or freezes indefinitely during the test, you may have a bad memory module on your hands.
(above taken from www.command-tab.com)

White Screen of Death, Please Help

Hey Guys ;
I have an imac 2010 with windows installed on it (No MacOS is installed). today I updated the windows and shut it down and after a few hours I turned it on but now I am only getting the white screen ! it doesnt boot up at all ! I dont know if this problem is related to windows update or not. it may be only luck that this has happened after updating my windows.
I tried to boot it from CD or a flash drive , but holding the option key or d or c doesnt do anything. when holding the option key , even the mouse cursor doesnt appear !
the only thing that works is reseting the PRAM , when I hold the option and command and p and r , I can hear the second chime , but still it doesnt boot up. it is why I am sure my keyboard is working. also I tried to reset the SMC but no results.
also I tried command + r and command + v , but no luck ! only white screen.
I dont understand why I dont get any kind of output ! even if my hdd is broken I should be able to boot from a CD , right ? or at least it should show some kind of error message or logs. but only white screen.
do you have any suggestions ?

Yes , I was using the original grey DVD. I tried holding all possible keys ! nothing worked.
Eventually I found out my HDD is dead , I opened my iMac and disconnected my HDD and now it can boot from CD. but the problem is that it shouldnt work this way. I have had a PC for many years and even if HDD dies , you can go to bios or boot from other devices and etc. it shouldnt cause a white screen of death !
may be apple is doing this intentionally so it can charge people for fixig their imacs ! it is not something complicated , it was just a dead HDD and I was getting no error messages or anything, Just a dead imac. thats frustrating.

How to deal with the "white screen of death"?

My 1 hour old iMac (27 inch i5) just died. I had used it for less than 30 mins when it downloaded an OS update and rebooted. Then it refuses to boot, stuck in a white screen.
After that I slid in the recover disk and used the disk utility to restore the HDD as in the recover manual. It then spent 30 mins recovering,. However, on re-start it is still stuck in the white screen of death.
What do i do now?

Hi anerjee;
With a brand new Mac, personally I would not mess with it. I would take it back to Apple and ask them to fix it.
Allan

White screen of Death. Reinstalled OSX Maverick but data is missing. HELP!

Help! i had a white screen of death on my iMac. Did a check via disk utility and the hard drive seems to be fine. I have partioned the hard drive into two volumes previously.
However, when I tried to reinstall OSX Maverick on the first partition, where it was originally installed, it was pointed out as being full and I was forced to reinstall it on the second partition. No problem with that.
However, when I start up the iMac, there are no files to be found. And this is really very upsetting to me as they contain memories of my family which I really treasure.
Am I doing anything wrong? When I go in to the set up utility and try to select partition 1, it will still give me the white screen of death and that the disk is full
Kindly advise if there is anyway for me to "force" install it on partiton 1 and regain access to my files.

If you reinstalled onto the second partition and used the same username/password combo for your admin user account, then you can boot into the voluime, open up the original volume, and drag your data from it to the same places on the second volume. To reinstall, you need to remove stuff from the full volume.
The following articles have some good tips:
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk and
Freeing Up Hard Disk Space

White Screen Of Death-Did all the key hold downs

Hello,
After the spinning beach ball of death today, the Imac is now in the White screen of death mode. I did power off, command option , p r keys with two chimes. I did the c key hold down. I tried the tech tool deluxe disc. I tried the power off only. I have unplugged and let it sit. Is there any thing else I can do?
Thank You!

Sorry, Kenichi, your post wasn't there a minute ago:(
+did not work+
Assuming you can get the Install Disc into the optical drive - with it already in the optical drive, then you power-up while holding down and continuing to hold down the c key (it's small case, so cap's lock off) until you see a spinning dial on the white screen (at that point you can release the c key) - how far does it get while trying to accomplish this?
Does it do anything at all? Make any noise? Power light on or flashing? Do you ever get to hear the Mac startup "gong" sound? or see the spinning dial?
The following article provides the startup sequence you might witness:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2674?viewlocale=en_US
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2538?viewlocale=en_US
Message was edited by: myhighway

White Screen of Death and Wipe Did Not Work

Hello -
I purchased my Blackberry 8900 a year ago and TMobile is my carrier.
I experienced a white screen of death on my Blackberry 8900 last nite while talking on it. It just dropped the call and the screen went white. I shut it off then back on, white screen appeared after reboot. I pulled the battery and left it out for 15 min, inserted it again and rebooted - still white.
I searched online and found a lot of info. My phone is recognized by the Desktop Manager software. I was able to back up all of my data and applications. I deleted all of the data on my phone through the DM as well (or thought I did - I can't tell if it worked or not). I downloaded the current version of the OS from TMobile for reinstallation.
I downloaded JL Cmder to fully wipe the phone. JL Cmder did not work on my home machine (Win 7) but I finally got it to work on my work machine (Vista) today.
I selected the wipe option (4) and JL Cmder successfully connected with the phone. The phone rebooted and I got happy, but on phone reboot I did NOT get the "507" error all of the how-to sites say I'm supposed to get. The phone rebooted with the same white screen and no error message. I've run the wipe command from JL Cmder a few times on the phone and it connects, reboots but I still get the white screen with no error message.
Is there anything else I need to do to get this 507 error? Or is my phone really dead?
I want to do what I can before I shell out more $$ for another phone.
Thanks in advance.

Thank you for your replies...
jmrmb80 - Yes the device is still recognized by the Desktop Manager. I reloaded the OS on it this morning and the App Loader says it was successful - but on reboot the white screen loads and thats it.
billrobinson - I haven't dropped the phone since I bought it. I wish I had b/c then I could blame it on something. My friends drop their phones all the time, spill stuff on them etc.... and I do nothing - and my phone blows up

White screen of death going temporarily black screen of death.

I have a iphone4s that went white-screen-of-death on me just last week. recently its now giving me a multi-coloured screen show, and a finale of black-screen-of-death. Not sure what to do, and whether its worth going to the apple store when I can't afford repairs, and its a year out of warranty. I can still answer calls, or access apps, etc, but can't see what I'm actually doing.

I have a iphone4s that went white-screen-of-death on me just last week. recently its now giving me a multi-coloured screen show, and a finale of black-screen-of-death. Not sure what to do, and whether its worth going to the apple store when I can't afford repairs, and its a year out of warranty. I can still answer calls, or access apps, etc, but can't see what I'm actually doing.

Inherited iMac, White screen of death, etc...

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for