"Mostly Dead" iMac

My early 2010 27" iMac froze while playing video in Netflix and now will not start. I get a start up tone and the grey screen with logo, then it goes to a blue screen and then it goes to a grey pixelated screen. i was able to open in safe mode a couple of times but since resetting the PRAM, it won't allow me to go into safe mode. I disconnected all peripherals but it didn't make any difference. I did a SMC reset and no improvement. I tried to launch from my installation discs but that didn't work either. When I was in safe mode, I ran a utility check and the only problem I came up with were some permission errors which I was able to repair. I tried to run a hard drive check but it didn't work either. I was only able to eject the installation discs by pressing the track pad on my mouse, nothing else worked.
Has my logicboard or hard drive failed? It seems like my next step is bring it to Apple but I hate to pay them money just for them to tell me it is dead. the hard drive on my model was recalled but I stupidly never had it replaced and I wonder if it is too late now. Any advice would be most appreciated.

Thank you for the responses. I ended up calling Apple Support. We were able to get it to launch in safe mode and eventually erased the hard drive and reinstalled OS X but now it says the airport card is missing. Apple said it sounds like a hardware problem and to bring it to the Genius bar. I have an appointment today but I think the logic board needs to be replaced, as I feared from the beginning, and I don't think it makes sense to sink $600 (?) into a 5 year old computer. I wonder if it is even worth lugging the 27" computer to Apple to confirm what seems pretty certain. Again, thank you for the guidance.
ETA: I don't have a second computer so I can't try the target drive trick unfortunately. But I do have a back up on time capsule, thankfully.

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How to get data from hard drive in dead iMac?

I have an old slot-loading iMac (350Mhz G3 blueberry) that just died, probably a dead power supply or something. Won't turn on at all. I don't care about restoring it, I just want to take the hard drive out and grab data from it. I've found instructions for removing the HD ... but any tips on the best/cheapest way to hook it up to get data from it? It's EIDE I believe from what I've read so far. Thanks for any help.

Hey Richard.....Thanks for the reply to my question about my wife's dead iMac.....
Her iMac had been acting up lately, mostly to do with her Outlook Express freezing up in OS9. I dunno if OS9 was freezing or if the application was failing. Regardless, I would have to quit OS9, restart Outlook which at the same time restarted OS9. All would be fine for a while, a day or two and then the scene would repeat itself. But I think that issue is separate from the iMac being "dead". Often we have power outages in the area, more than we should. I had the iMac plugged into a battery backup, some APS product I think it is. I believe it is only good for less than an hour as we have other devices drawing on it too. Most of our power outages are of short duration, just enough to be aggravating, sometimes having to reset clocks, etc...And a couple times, I would have to reset the time and date on the iMac so this told me that the PRAM battery was below minimum voltage. But the iMac would ALWAYS restart, even with the low battery. But the most recent outage, about one hour duration, did in the iMac, somehow or other. I do believe the battery backup basically fully discharged. So I removed the battery, could not find a new battery locally so I drove to the big city and paid the local Apple service dealer a visit. I got ripped big time price wise, embarrassed to say. So I get home, put the battery in the holder, depressed the CMU reset, the powerbutton illuminated as did a green LED by the memory modules for less than three seconds and then quit. I also heard the HD trying to spin up and a high voltage THUMP which I assume is the CRT trying to ignite. If I unplugged the iMac, removed the battery, plug in the power again and hit the power button, the iMac would repeat the same short on period and then quit. So it did not seem to make any difference if there was a battery in place. I read somewhere to pull the battery, pull the AC cord, hold down the power button to dump any current (?) and let the unit sit for 24hrs. After that length of time, I was supposed to replace the battery, depress the CMU reset, wait ten seconds and then feed it AC. Well, when I pressed the power button, I heard life for maybe five seconds, maybe a second longer, then a beep and then it shut down. I pulled the AC cord, pulled the battery, re-inserted the battery, depressed the CMU reset, waited a few seconds, plugged in the AC cord, depressed the power button and I am back at the under three seconds of "power-up" and then nothing, dead, no beep, nothing. I think maybe it is a waste of time trying to mess with this unit, looking for a newer iMac on eBay, the snowball series with the 17" LCD, might be time better spent. Hate throwing stuff away, that's why I am up to my ears in junk, maybe u know that scenario. The wife likes my 19" ACER LCD screen, hooked up to this old dual 800mhz, though she dislikes the noise and the tower. But we both agree the large LCD screen is much easier on our aging eyes than the old iMac CRT. Anyway, I appreciate your help, always GREAT to correspond with an Apple fan.....John Bauer

Use dead iMac Display as monitor?

I have a dead iMac (mobo fried) and was wondering if there is any way I can extract the display panel, and use either a bought or DIY/hacked adapter to use it as a standard monitor.

K Shaffer wrote:
This topic has been well-played here; the replies
given to several inquiries have been researched.
I'm not an expert, only having owned, repaired &
donated to charities, some 140 Macintoshes.
And I've not been heavily into dissecting my four
iMac G4 computers with 17" LCD displays. But
I do know the computer with a failed logicboard
will not support the display; the graphics or video
processor is integrated, and the panel has only
a few of the necessary support circuits with it
above the chrome arm in the panel's case.
There are a few ways of integrating a different
fully self-contained display into the dead iMac
case and perhaps use the existing LCD or an
other LCD and put additional circuitry into the
base of the iMac G4 instead of the dead LB.
And the earlier reply was essentially spot-on.
Other discussions on this topic are most likely
to be found in the proper forum for iMac G4,
Apple - Support - Discussions - iMac G4 flat panel:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=137
Later G5 & Intel-based iMac cases could be
used, empty, to support an entire complete
display of similar size; and the circuits likely
would fit if the case had room enough, empty.
An apology would be in order, if you came in
to a retail establishment and talked to a tech
with a determined to fail attitude like that.
Good luck & happy computing!
{edited to add correct iMac G4 forum link}
My attitude was like that because i know what I am talking about. I now it is not a display. That is what bugged me. he talked to me like I had no idea what I am talking about. he also did not provide an answer like you that was well thought out and seemingly well researched, he said "I guess." I will, and have accepted, that this is not really possible. It was not his answer, it was his attitude towards the question. and just a BTW, I am talking about the intel imac. The white one, not the g4.

I wish to remove my hard drive from a dead iMac, and have it place into an external case. Any good sources for the person to do the work?

I have a dead iMac (mother board), intel duo.I wish to remove the hard drive and made into an external hard drive (hopefully being able to read the contents). Any recommendations as to whom I should go to to do the work?

AASP Locator

I had a 'dead' iMac repaired and it needed a new HDD & graphics card, the repairer installed OSX 10.6.8 and i now need to install other software but I am being asked for 'User' password so I may do this, I've no idea what this will be. Help please.

I had a 'dead' iMac repaired and it needed a new HDD and graphics card, the repairer installed OSX 10.6.8 and i now need to install other software but I am being asked for 'User' password so I may do this, I have no idea what this will be. can anybody help please?
<Personal Information Edited by Host>

On looking at the secure.log on the iMac with OSX10.6.8, I see these entries at each attempt to scp into the iMac:
Dec 29 11:06:20 molika sshd[7248]: in pam_sm_authenticate(): Failed to determine Kerberos principal name.
Dec 29 11:06:26 molika sshd[7246]: Accepted keyboard-interactive/pam for prowat from 137.110.243.132 port 35571 ssh2
Dec 29 11:06:26 molika com.apple.SecurityServer[26]: Session 0x236a14 created
Dec 29 11:06:26 molika com.apple.SecurityServer[26]: Session 0x236a14 attributes 0x20
Dec 29 11:06:27 molika com.apple.SecurityServer[26]: Session 0x236a14 dead
Dec 29 11:06:27 molika com.apple.SecurityServer[26]: Killing auth hosts
Dec 29 11:06:27 molika com.apple.SecurityServer[26]: Session 0x236a14 destroyed
I don't know what to make of this.
Peter R

Using a hair-dryer to resurrect a dead iMac CTR!

I visit this forum often enough to see how many people are finding it hard to get their old (but perfectly usable) iMac CTR to work again.
Well, after putting in a new battery, my good old iMac G3 400 SE slot loader was still not booting. I knew everything worked. I turned it off for a day, and then it wouldn't boot up again. All I got was a green flicker as I tried to power on.
Well, low and behold, I used a hair-dryer to warm up the inside of the system, and it booted up fine!
Hopefully this might work for some others with presumable dead iMac G3s. But the question is why??? If I put the system to sleep I get the same "playing dead" iMac and have to wake it up again with the hair dryer. Any thoughts?

Thanks for your input. Yes I did check a number of things, including all connectors fitting ok, but maybe I missed something. I did try swapping out even the logic boards and hard drives, to no avail. My guess it is something with the monitor itself, since the other components work fine, and only when the monitor is heated enough will it start.
I have no problems with the computer otherwise, but I hate to waste electricity - it just can't sleep or it will play dead. Thanks again.
I hope this might help others who might have the same problem thinking it is something wrong with the computer, when it is really the monitor. Go get those hair dryers revved!

Semi Dead iMac

I just inherited a semi dead iMac. When booted it displays the OS 9 icon and never goes any further. The previous owner says he was running 10.3.X
I ran Disk Warrior. It completed and the system was rebooted. The drive spun up but the screen remained black. The white LED lit up. I rebooted and held the mouse down to eject the DW disk. The drawer wouldn't open but I was able to manually eject the disk.
I rebooted and attempted to reset the PRAM. I only got one chime. I powered down and unplugged the power cord for one minute. Plugged power in and attempted to reset PRAM with no luck.
I reset the PMU and powered up. The drive spun up, the screen stayed black and the white LED remained dark.
Anyone got any ideas?
TIA,
Mike
G4 400, iBook, G5 iMac, Pismo PB, 1G iPod Mac OS X (10.3.9) F87, Crappy Toshiba Laptop, Trek Y66, Ludwig Vistalites, Birth. Drums. Death.
G4 400, iBook, G5 iMac, Pismo PB, 1G iPod Mac OS X (10.3.9) F87, Crappy Toshiba Laptop, Trek Y66, Ludwig Vistalites, Birth. Drums. Death.

If you have the disks, I'd try installing a fresh copy of OS X. Or running Apple Hardware Test.
Have you tried booting in verbose mode (cmd-v). You might get more a more specific error that way.

Can iWeb be used on the most recent iMACs?

Can iWeb be used on the most recent iMACs? I've used iWeb for several years but am thinking about upgrading my iMAC.
Ted Norton

See this page for info about using iWeb with Mountain Lion...
http://www.iwebformusicians.com/iWeb/mountain-lion.html
The new version of OSX may be announced next week and it will be interesting to see how iWeb will survive.

Dead iMac 17'' Intel

Hello everyone,
I have a big problem with my iMac 17'' intel, and a service provider in Serbia, the only service provider in Serbia.
I broth my iMac to a service provider in Serbia - GlobeNet (www.applecentar.co.yu ) a month and a half ago, on 13th December 2008.
I finally got some news today, and they said that my iMac is dead. It took a month and a half to find out that it's dead.
My iMac is a few months out of warranty, and it's dead. What does that even mean.
So what they said is that I have to by a new one.
Am I dreaming this.
There are a few problems with it:
Vertical lines on the display
Super drive won't read or write DVD's
and finaly it won't boot most of the time and when it does the screan goes black and it wont respond to any command
Does anybody know what to do, who can I contact, I tried [email protected], but I got an automated response that there is no email contact.
Pls help

Thank you for your suggestions.
I called again today, and today some other guy said that they still haven't diagnosed what's wrong with it.
Seams that it was in clinical death hehe. I'm laughing because I don't like the alternative.
They also said today, that they will check my iMac right now, and call me in a few hours. ???!!!!
Why was it there for a month and a half if they can diagnose it in a few hours.
Does Apple have any criteria what so ever, when they authorize service providers.
Sadly my conclusion is: don't use Apple products if you live in Serbia.

Dead imac g4?

Hi there, I need help!
Last week I got a call from a friend because his imac g4 (800mhz - Tiger 4.2) wouldn't start up; it would get to the grey Apple and the spinning wheel and then just sit there. I tried fsck in single user mode, the catalog check failed, same when booting from the installation disc. I ran Mac Test Pro and all the hardware passed, but the test failed again when it came to checking the directory. Booted it up in firewire mode from my own machine, ran disc utility, failed again. Anyway, the upshot is that we did a clean erase and install with Tiger, ran software update, checked everything with Applejack, no problems.
However ... I went round there tonight, saw the maching running fine, my friend was using mail, the machine had been fine all weekend, when all of a sudden, Mail crashed - spinning beachball of death. Tried to force quit - nothing, held the power button and restarted the machine - got the folder with a question mark. Zapped the pram - no effect, tried single user mode - won't do it, tried to open the cd drawer - won't do it (even in open firmware). I took the machine away again and booted it up using my machine in single user mode with the Tiger disc in it:
Ran Disc utility from the Tiger DVD (in my imac G5 in Firewire mode) opened System profiler on the G4 and can see no hard drive in the G4 and no burner - It's as if the Hard drive and the cd drive have been disconnected.
Now I'm still getting the Folder/question mark and can't boot the mac up or open the cd drive.
Any ideas?
All the best,
Kev.
Note, I've also posted this on Mac Fixit.com

Hi again,
just an update and another plea for help. I've tried a few more things, but still get the flashing question mark - zapped the PRAM (again), replaced the battery, checked the harddrive/cd cable, measured the voltage on the battery check points (3.61 vdc), and finally reset the PMU (pressed it only once). Still no sign of the hard drive and open firmware eject cd is still unable to do so.
Incidentally, upon startup, after the chime, I can hear a 'tick tock, tick tock, tick tock' sound, and then I can hear the HD spinning down.
Can I say for definite yet whether the HD is dead or not? And if so, then what's happening to the CD drive?
Any help would be most gratefully received.
All the very best,
Kev.

Five dead iMacs, all in a row... help?

Hi,
Over the years I have had a dozen iMacs from the revA up. Now I have a collection of five of them that are dead. I would like to cannibalize them to see if I could get a couple back up. My question:
What three parts are the MOST likely failures? All present with no startup, no nada. And all were running MacOS 9. For example, is the internal battery the same part number on all?
I'm going to use one of the remaining 233 as the "good parts" bin for now. All
Thanks

Miguel V...
I would say the flyback is the most common expected failure in a iMac (CRT). My guess is about 90-95%. This involves the Analog Board in the Tray Loaders, PAV board in the Slot loaders. Power supplies and other related items seem to be more rare but possible.
The Mac(s) that use a 3.6v 1/2 AA Lithum, standard tip & base battery, is a common industry standard. My preference has been the Saft LS 14250C mainly because of quality construction and 1.2 Amp/hour capacity. Others are probably ok but I can get them at a wholesale price 3 to 1 of the Radio Shack or Apple price.
Apple does list their own part numbers of which was given when some specs was drawn up at the time of manufacture. Those are just for ordering purposes and may contain other brands of acceptable quality.
...Ron

Retrieving data from a dead iMac

How do I retrieve the data from my white iMac G5 that has a fried logic board? Can I do this myself? And if so how?

Since the logic board is fried, you can perform a post-mortem yourself.
Go to ifixit.com, and find the instructions to remove the HD. NO warranty, and unit dead ... who cares if you crack the shell.
Then buy an external enclosure from macsales.com such as this one (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/FWU3ES2HDK/) or others you find by going to macsales.com and typing "enclosures" in the search box. Ths will access the old drive as "external".

Dead iMac 350MHz

Hello,
My sister has been using my old computer (iMac G3 350MHz, Blueberry, w/ 512MB RAM.) Over this past weekend, the computer was on, and it randomly shut off. When my sister tried to power up the computer, it wouldn't power up. I tried different outlets to no avail. I also swapped the power cords, but still no results. The only thing I noticed is when I unplug the power cord from the back of the computer and replug it back in, when the power button is pushed, the green light goes on and it turns off, but only stays on for 1/2 to a 1/4 of a second and shuts off. Any suggestions on tackling this problem? I replaced the PRAM battery about 3 or 4 years ago, but I can't see why it would make the computer completely unable to start up.

The most likely cause, based on the symptoms you describe, is that the analog video board has gone bad. This is the part that connects directly to the CRT display to show the image. I base this guess on the iMac not powering up after a shutdown unless it is unplugged in between attempts, and it powering up for only a short time before shutting off again. It seems to be the most common failure on these old CRT iMacs.
There is a lesser possibility that it is the power supply or the PRAM battery. If the battery has not been replaced recently (a few years), you may want to check that possibility. It looks like this
http://eshop.macsales.com/item-specials/Newer%20Technology/BAA36VPRAM/
If you have access to a voltmeter, you can check your current battery for 3.6v.
Unfortunately, if it's the video board or the power supply, for most people, it is not an economical fix.

Disc stuck in dead iMac

Hi, I have a slot-loading iMac DV 400 that died quite a while ago (lightning, ouch) and it had a disc in the CD drive at the time. I have a new 2 Ghz 17" G5 now, but I want to use that disc and since the iMac is pretty dead there are no commands or tricks I can use to get it without damaging the disc (i.e. tweezers). I'm about to take apart the iMac and remove the CD drive and see if I can get it out then. I'm using the guide from the "iMac Take Apart" site so you don't need to post any links to it, but I thought I'd put a post here incase my idea doesn't work. Well thats about it for now, thanks for reading my problem =)

Well I was able to get the CD drive out without much difficulty, however it seems to have an iMac dead grip on the disc as there is a metal bar preventing the disc from being taken out of the front. This makes sense since the disc was in the iMac normally when it got fried and it seems like that metal bar is there so that when the disc is spinning in the comp it doesn't come flying out and decapitate you. Anyway now I'll have to try taking apart the CD drive itself to get at the disc. Hopefully I can do it without damaging anything (and be able to put it back together afterwards). I'll post another update soon

Running dead iMac from external SSD?

After watching a video on how to install an SSD in my early 2008 iMac, I bought an external USB enclosure and opted to simply boot off it, using my iMac's internal drive as a backup. This has worked great for more than a year. But last week, after 5 years of yeoman service, the internal drive died. The iMac still boots up fine off the external SSD. I would just like to know if there's any reason I shouldn't continue to use the iMac in this fashion. Any comments or advice appreciated.

Just tried to boot the newly cloned external SSD. Pressed the option key on startup to bring up the startup disk icons. Just got a gray screen. Did a hard shutdown, disconnected the two SSD's. Waited. Reconnected everything. Tried again. This time one SSD icon of the two came up but nothing happened when I clicked on it. Shut down again. Zapped the PRAM. Booted again. This time I got both SSD icons. Yay. But the cursor wouldn't move nor would the arrow keys do anything. Boo. This time I disconnected the SSD's and pulled the power cord from the back of the iMac. Waited a few minutes then reconnected. Booted again. Again got the single icon and the frozen cursor. I had the feeling that the dead (or almost dead) internal hard drive was somehow getting in the way of the startup process. I disconnected one of the SSD's and the remaining one booted fine. I re-connected the second one. It mounted. I opened up the Startup Disk Pref Pane. Only one of the SSD's showed up so I selected the one there. I re-booted & voila. All is sweetness and light. I think I'm going to have to open up the box and disconnect the comatose HD so I don't have to do this dance anymore.

"Mostly Dead" iMac

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