Power Mac G5 boot issue

Hi all,
I'm having trouble's with my recently aquired Power Mac G5. It's the dual 2.7GHz liquid cooled model, 2GB DDR-400 (4x 512), 2x 160GB drives. It all originally started with a coolant leak which seems to be a pretty common occurance with these models, however I repaired this (which included replacing the power supply unit). The RAM, HDDs and PRAM battery are all brand new.
The unit will power up when you hit the power button (i.e, the fans rev up as normal, the hard drives spin up and you can hear the liquid cooling pump running) but the power LED doesn't stay on. It only illuminates when you actually press the button. There is no boot chime or anything displayed on the monitor. The fans eventually speed up to max speed and you can feel that the CPUs are generating heat. The unit will switch off if you hold down the power button for a few seconds.
The diagnostic LED next to the RAM only illuminates when you remove the air deflector (and HDD bay fan revs up accordingly) and there is no obvious visual damage to the unit. There is a red LED underneath the CPU & cooling unit however, but I haven't found any information about what this one is for.
Any information on this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

Hi,
Just an update. I removed the front-panel board completely and started the machine by shorting the power button pins on the logic board. Unfortunately there was no difference to the start-up than mentioned originally so we can assume that the front-panel board is working OK.
While I was at it, I also tried a full PRAM/SMU reset by removing power and battery for 20 minutes, reinstalling the battery, pressing PRAM Reset, plugging back in and starting, but was also unsucessful
Jake

Similar Messages

  • Mac Pro Boot Issue

    Mac Pro - "Quad", 2 X 2.66Ghz; 5GB RAM; OS X 10.5.6
    Mac Pro will not boot. It powers up to the grey Apple logo screen. The progress circle spins for about 3 seconds, then powers itself off.
    This past week I came back from two weeks off. The first morning back I noticed my Mac was sluggish at times and freezing for a few seconds here and there. When Time Machine backups would kick in, the whole system would be unresponsive for minutes at a time. After turning off all other equipment in my office, I could detect a tell-tale "click click, spin" type noise coming from one of my two internal drives (one for OS and a second for backups).
    I tracked the noise to the boot drive and guessing it was about to go out, I ordered a replacement Samsung Spinpoint 750GB. Good thing, because the next day when I came in to work my machine was having worse problems. IF it would boot, it would hang after a few minutes of use. If it would not boot, it would power up to the grey Apple logo, the progress circle would spin a few seconds, the power itself off.
    I waited another day and the new drive arrived. I pulled the old OS drive, installed the new one, then dumped our standardized clone image on the drive (using CCC). After the clone was complete, I booted up on the drive, tested it out for a couple of hours and verified that it was working as expected. Next I copied data over to my drive from my backup drive. Everything looked fine.
    Three days later, I come in to find my Mac will no longer boot. Grey Apple logo, spinning, etc.. I power off and boot from my external diagnostic drive (OS X 10.5.5). It will not boot. I remove both internal drives and try another boot from the external diagnostic drive. It boots up fine. Shutdown. Remove the backup drive (drive bay 2) and try to reboot from the diag drive once again. It will not boot. Remove the OS drive (drive bay 1) and it boots to the diagnostic drive fine (note: no internal drives are installed at this point). Shutdown. Install the OS drive into drive bay 2 and it then boots to the diagnostic drive just fine.
    So now I have booted to my external diag drive and can see that the OS drive is showing on the Desktop; however a pop-up error stating there is a problem has appeared. I try to verify the OS drive using Disk Utility and it stops about 2 seconds into the process with a "Filesystem verify or repair failed" error. The OS drive will then not mount.
    I restart booting back to the external diag drive. The OS drive shows up on the Desktop with the same pop-up error message as before.
    I run Tech Tool Pro from the diag drive and it comes back with a File Structure error of "Type List Offset Is Invalid" and "No method for Tech Tool Pro to repair a corrupt file". I have a surface scan and drive hardware test running now, but on a 750GB it will be a WHILE.
    So here is my predicament... I can understand my original OS drive having problems. It was at least 3 yrs old and has been run quite hard. But what are the odds that I would replace it with a brand new drive running a verified to be good cloned disk image AND have almost the exact same boot issues on the new drive that I had on the old one?
    I have taken my original OS drive and hooked it up to external cases and sata-to-usb adapters to make sure that it was actually dead and it is. It will not spin up properly and makes lots of clicking noises. However, having a similar boot issue with a brand new drive has me worried something may be wrong with the Mac Pro hardware also. The new OS drive ran fine for a few days and only had these problems today.
    Any guesses?

    Here is my own "cookie cutter" template to this type of problem.
    Insure your UPS is working properly and that you have 1300VA to start with.
    Run Apple Hardware Test of course.
    CCC has been updated so make sure latest (it auto checks probably already).
    Do you have Windows? run diagnostics from there, much better.
    I settled on WD drives and use WD Diagnostic and has saved a drive.
    Avoid Barracudas, seems even their 1TB is also suffering early failures (the 1.5TB was suffering from firmware problem).
    Check for reviews and drive upgrade DB on AccelerateYourMac.
    http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/
    I know the F1 got a lot of early praise but they aren't compatible with Apple Pro RAID card and may have other issues.
    If you want a fast low-cost drive, WD Cavair 640GB $69.
    http://www.barefeats.com/harper14.html
    Hitachi E7K1000: http://techreport.com/articles.x/16130/10
    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-terabyte-1tb,2077-8.html
    I have seen more than a couple of similar stories from people going away for 1-2 weeks and coming home to system that won't work properly. Hopefully people shutdown and unplug, or shutdown and have UPS, but it is strange to say the least.
    Resetting SMC is a good idea but best done with 2008 model by leaving it unplugged for a full night 8-12 hrs. and not just 5 minutes. contrary to Apple tech article. For yours, there is a small physical button accessed by pulling drive tray #4 (easier to see if it is on its side and you have flashlight!)
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1806
    http://www.apple.com/support/macpro/

  • Power Mac wont boot

    ok I just bought my very 1st first mac last month its a power Mac G4 When I put it into sleep mode i had a black out about an hour later when i tried to start it up I got a gray screen with the apple symbol and the and the scroll symbol hanging I was able to get to the Dos command single user screen and it says this
    well this is part of it
    (ipc/send) invalid destination port : initCGDISPLAYSTATE cannot map display interlocks
    KCG ERROR Failure : CGS NEW CONNECTION CANNOT CONNECT TO SERVER INIT_PROCESSES Could not establish connection to window server./etc/rc.boot: line 1 11ABORT open
    KEY:
    What does that mean ??? and how can I get it to boot normally and
    I have no Boot disk or nothing like that ...

    Hi Chris-1, and welcome to the forums!
    Oh boy, you're up a creek without the Install Disks, in fact legally speaking, the License to use OSX goes with the Install disc, they should've included it!
    Tough without a Tiger Disk, but try fsck...
    To use fsck, you must run it from the command line. Unlike using your mouse to open an application to do something, you'll need to type a text command at the prompt (#) to tell fsck what to do. The Terminal application (/Applications/Utilities) and single-user mode are two examples of command-line interfaces in which you can type such commands. To use fsck:
    1. Start up your computer in single-user mode to reach the command line. Hold CMD+s keys down at bootup.
Note: If necessary, perform a forced restart as described in the Emergency Troubleshooting Handbook that came with your computer. On desktop computers, you can do this by pressing the reset/interrupt button (if there is one) or holding down the power button for several seconds. On portable computers, simultaneously press the Command-Control-power keys. If your portable computer doesn't restart with this method, you may need to reset the Power Manager.
    2. At the command-line prompt, type /sbin/fsck -fy
    (space between fsck and -fy important)
    3. Press Return. fsck will go through five "phases" and then return information about your disk's use and fragmentation. Once it finishes, it'll display this message if no issue is found:
** The volume (nameofvolume) appears to be OK 
If fsck found issues and has altered, repaired, or fixed anything, it will display this message:
*** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *** 

Important: If this message appears, repeat the fsck command you typed in step 2 until fsck tells you that your volume appears to be OK (first-pass repairs may uncover additional issues, so this is a normal thing to do).
    4. When fsck reports that your volume is OK, type reboot at the prompt and then press Return.
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

  • Quicksilver Power Mac Spinning Wheel Issue

    I have a Quicksilver P-Mac 867mhz tower that has 10.4.11 installed. 3 days ago it was running super slow and I had to relaunch the finder. It froze and when I rebooted the Mac it comes up to the Apple logo screen with the spinning wheel and that is it. Nothing else comes up even after sitting there for 20+ minutes. From the other posts, I thought maybe the batter was the issue, but I installed a new one today and that didn't fix it. I have reset the PRAM and have tried booting up in safe mode. No luck with either item. Could it be the power supply? This Mac has 2 internal harddrives, the original 60 gig and another 120 gig. I have had the system for 5+ years with no problems.
    Any thoughts on this issue? I would think the hard drives should be good since I do not see the flashing ? icon come up during the boot process, but I also cannot insert a Tech Tool CD to reboot and try to repair either.
    John

    When I try to boot up the Mac, it gives the Apple logo and then the spinning wheel kicks in and just sits there. I can let it do this for 10+ minutes and nothing changes on the screen. So, my problem is that I cannot insert TTP CD into the optical drive because it will not open from the keyboard command.
    This seems to be a big problem not being able to open the optical drive so that the Mac would boot off of TTP to try and fix the problem. Any other thoughts?
    Thanks,
    John

  • Power Mac G4 Boot-up problem?

    I have a Power Mac G4 when it is turned on shows the apple, then OSX Loading window, then a blank blue sreen with a black turning wheel and then a black screen with small white letters at the top of screen that say,
    "Darwin/BSB (my computer, local console)
    login:
    After I type in anything I hit the enter key,
    password:
    this Mac has no login nor a password except the enter key. After I hit the enter key a message appears for a millisec or long enough for me the read "incorrect password" the blue screeen with the black spinning wheel reappears then the afore mentioned black screen with white letters reappears.
    Please help. Thank you for for time.

    Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), does that bring up a login box?
    If not let's try fooling it with a new admin user.
    Reset OS X Password Without an OS X CD...
    http://theappleblog.com/2008/06/22/reset-os-x-password-without-an-os-x-cd/
    Admin Hack...
    http://www.hackmac.org/?q=node/4
    Starts up like the first time you buy a new Mac, but after filling in all that info again, you should have access to the computer and the other Users & files will still be there... give the new User a different name than an existing one.

  • G5 Power Mac Wont Boot

    Hello, all.
    I'm trying to fix a G5 tower, power pc with issues booting. The owner was browsing a large folder of images when, suddenly, the pinwheel of death began spinning without end. He had to reboot the system. When he now boots the system, there is the white/grey screen with the apple logo and the fans go on overdrive after several minutes of idling on the screen.
    When we booted from our 10.4 disk, we could not repair or verify our hard disk. It said that the disk could not unmount. We even installed a brand new hard drive, but we couldn't install 10.4 on it. We even tried to verify the new drive after the failed installation and we got the same "unmount" error.
    I'm not sure what to do. I've searched and browsed other posts, but I can't seem to find any similar issues. Perhaps someone can help?
    Thanks,
    J

    Hi Jeremy, did you pull the old Drive when trying to Install to the new one?
    If you have anther Mac With Firewire, you might try putting the G5 into FireWire target disk mode...
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583

  • Mac Mini boot issues

    I've got a Mac Mini (1.83 Core 2 Duo) running 10.6.8. Stock hard drive. Upgraded the RAM a couple of years ago, and haven't had any issues with it, until recently. It is always plugged into a UPS.
    This past weekend, we decided to rearrange some of the rooms in our house, and the the Mac Mini was unplugged for about 8 hours. Went to hook it back up in its new location and it wouldn't turn on. So, tried the SMC reset a few times, and wouldn't turn on. Tried PMU reset, and it powers up, fans blazing. Aside from the jet engine level noise, it runs perfectly.
    Seeing this, I tried the SMC reset again to fix the fans, and it no longer powers up. No beeps, no fan, nothing. Redoing the PMU reset makes the unit bootable again.
    Why does it not power up with the SMC reset, but does with the PMU reset? And how do I fix this? The fan noise is really loud.
    Thanks.

    You could try running diagnostics to see if there's a hardware failure.
    How to run hardware diagnostics for an Intel Mac
    Boot from your original OS X Installer Disc One that came with your computer.  After the chime press and hold down the "D" key until the diagnostic screen appears.  Run the extended tests for a minimum of two or three hours.  If any error messages appear note them down as you will need to report them to the service tech when you take the computer in for repair.
    Some "common" error indicators:
    SNS - sensor error
    MEM - memory error
    HDD - hard disk drive error
    MOT - fan error
    Others that have posted with a similar problem usually found a hardware failure caused the problem - power brick, faulty power connector or cord, for example. So a visit to the Apple store may be appropriate it.

  • POWER MAC G3 FireWire Issue--Where to go?

    I can't believe there's no place in the Discussions for blue and white Power Macintosh G3s. If you can talk about a 400MHz G4, I don't see why we're left out.
    My issue: has anyone ever succesfully used Target Disk Mode with a PowerMac G3? I have tried it between two of them--never worked once; between G3 and G4, no dice. PowerBooks--nothing. Supposedly you can do TDM from OS 9 to OS X but I can't get two identical machines to see each other. I have 16 of them and it works on none of them None seem to need the FireWire updates either.

    Hi, Toolshed -
    Firewire TDM is pretty much independent of the OS. However, it is dependent on the hardware of the machine being able to support it.
    All Macs which have built-in firewire are capable of being the Host machine in FwTDM. However, not all such are capable of being the Target machine - specifically, the B&W G3 and the G4 (PCI) models do not support being the Target machine. Probably not a coincidence, both of those models are also not capable of booting to firewire.
    Thomas Bryant provided the link to the applicable KBase article fpr FwTDM in his post above.

  • Power Mac G4 boots in OS9 first then OS X

    I just updated from OS 9.2.2 to OS 10.1.2. When I power up I get the OLD OS 9 face icon, then I get the X icon. When the computer finished booting, I have a blue screen with only the speaker ICON and the time visible in the upper right hand corner. There is no dock visible, no hard drive and no folder for OS 9. I can click on the time, click on show time and date and get the the sysem preferences, but I can't do anything. If I go to force quiet, it shows the finder ICON for OS 9 over and over again, like it's stuck or something. If I boot the computer in OS 9.2.2, I have no problems. I know the OS X software is there, I just can't access it.
    If I boot into Open Firmware it shows my boot device as the following:
    /pci@f200000/pci-bridge@d/mac-io@7/ata-4@1f000/@0:9\\:tbxi hd;,\\:tbxi
    Is this somehow telling the computer the boot in OS 9.2.2 even thow I choose the startup disk as OX 10.1.2
    Any help would be appreciated.
    Thanks

    Hi Superboss,
    Welcome to the discussions.
    It would probably have been better for you to post this topic in this section:
    http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=739
    Mac OS X v10.3 Panther & earlier > Installation and Setup
    I'll try and give you a hand anyway.
    Make sure you have at least 1 Gig of free hard drive space - OS X is quite particular about that.
    Boot up in OS 9, then go to Startup Disk. Check to see that a System X is available. If it is, select that system then restart.
    If the same thing happens as before, your installation of OS X has failed somehow (the computer can't find a properly working OS X). Provided you haven't applied any updates later than what is on your OS X installation disc, try a re-install of OS X. If that doesn't work, then try an "Archive and Install" (you get to that via the "Options" button in the installation process). Note that you will need enough free space on your hard drive to install a second OS X.
    Do not try "Erase and Install" or you will lose access to everything, including OS 9.
    If , after all this, you still have problems, then I would suspect the installation disk itself. Is this installation the full retail version, or was it originally bundled with another machine? You should be using a full retail version, as the other editions are machine specific and using them on another machine can cause problems.
    Be sure to back up all your important data before you do any of this.
    Let us know how you go.
    Cheers!
    Karl

  • Early 2008 Mac Pro boot issue

    I'm having what seems to be a hardware issue with my Mac Pro on booting. The MP boots to either a blue screen or a chunked grey screen (http://gallery.me.com/dwphoto#100036/IMG_1401) and hang. So far, I've tried booting from multiple clones (from 10.5-10.6.6) as well as the Snow Leopard install DVD, reinstalling SL, removed all 3rd party cards and usb/firewire externals, zapped the PRAM, repaired permissions, verified disks. It will boot into Safe Mode without problem. If it hangs on normal boot, all the drives are visible and active over a network. I'm pretty stumped.

    They were reluctant? I hope you printed out the Apple article. Unbelievable.
    What I would like would be a link at the top of this forum and more direct access (and we all want better organized and search results to KB articles).
    There ought to be "newest changes KB" and a Warranty category
    http://www.apple.com/support/macpro

  • My Power Mac G4 booted from an OS 9.1 install CD, and then froze up.  Now I turn the machine on, beeps 3 times, power button blinks 3 times.  What does this mean?

    I tried to install Mac OS 9.1.  I turned the computer on, heard the bong noise (although with some static), and inserted the OS 9.1 installation CD.  It started to boot, but froze up.  I rebooted the machine, and the same thing happened.  One more reboot, and i get 3 beeps and the power button is blinking.  What does this mean?

    Hi, it indicates a RAM problem, (or Logic Board around the RAM).
    The power on self-test resides in the ROM of the computer. This test runs whenever the computer is turned on after being fully shut down (the power-on self-test does not run if the computer is only restarted).
    If a fault is detected during the test, you will not hear a normal startup chime. Instead, the system will beep as explained below. If you experience one of these beeps, you may call your Apple Authorized Service Provider for additional troubleshooting assistance.
    1 beep  = no RAM installed
    2 beeps = incompatible RAM types
    3 beeps = no good banks
    4 beeps = no good boot images in the boot ROM (and/or bad sys config block)
    5 beeps = processor is not usable
    In addition to the beeps, on some computers the power LED will flash a corresponding number of times plus one. The LED will repeat the sequence after approximately a 5-second pause. The tones are only played once.
    Note: In this case, a flash is considered to be 1/4 second or 250 ms or greater in length.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1547

  • Mac Mini boot issue after reinstalling original RAM

    Hi,
    So i am having issues with my 2012 Mac Mini i5 with 4gb of RAM(2x2Gb).  I wanted to upgrade my RAM and unfortunately i keep getting stuck at the Apple logo screen with the progress/loading bar.  The bar gets up to around 40-50% and then my mini just shuts down. So one fix action i took was to reinstall the original RAM, nope that didn't do it.  Next i reset the PRAM and same issue, I am stuck now and have no idea what to do next short of tossing this thing off the building.  as you can see its a bit frustrating, so any and all help would be very much appreciated. Thank you
    - Phillip

    Boot to Recovery and reair the startup disk
    OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support
    Can you run Apple Hardware Test?
    Try one stick of memory in each slow with the other slot empty
    Using Apple Hardware Test
    Reinstall the OS The following also works on Yosemite
    OS X Mavericks: Reinstall OS X

  • Power Mac G5- Display Issue

    PowerMac G5 running OS 10.5.8 with 20" cinema display.
    Changed the inverter board in monitor due to one long, two short flashes.  No more flashing light.
    BUT...
    Screen resolution is funky.  Have res to highest setting and MOST things look fine except that when I am on the desktop the icons and fonts are too large, gey bar on top of desktop (along with text) is too big.  Checked the settings for desktop icon size, Universal access, etc. etc and everything seems to be in order.
    HOWEVER...
    I dove in last night and reinstalled the OS.  During the reinstall the grey bar on top iof desktop (along with text) is fine and the windows that open are of the right size.
    I am dumbfounded...any ideas?
    JLG

    Let's try to fix the other account.
    Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions.
    Move these files to the Desktop for now...
    /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.<12digitHexNu mber>.plist
    /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist
    /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist
    /Users/<yourname>/Library/Preferences/ com.apple.systemuiserver.plist
    /Users/<yourname>/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.systemuiserver.xxx.plist
    where 'xxx' is a 12 digit (hexadecimal) numeric string.
    /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
    /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
    /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist
    Reboot & test.
    PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.

  • HT2037 Power Mac log on issues

    Recently, I restarted it and went to log on. Upon inputting the correct password, the log on initiated. About halfway through the lon in, it now abruptly stops and reverts back to the log on dialog box. How do I correct this?

    Hi Paul Barrick1-
    RAM does go bad. Each successive release of mac OXS10.x tends to make a Mac "pickier" about RAM.
    Did you try installing the RAM skipping the first pair of slots?
    The hardware test does little except check to make sure RAM is present. This program, run at 20 or 30 iterations, will root out any problems: Rember
    Luck-
    -DP

  • Mac Mini boot issue, chime, but no video signal.

    Hello,
    I'm repurposing an older MacMini for use as a home media server.  The machine specs are as follows:
    2.53mHz//2x2G/320/SD/AP/BT
    I have: 
    1.  Removed Airport/Bluetooth card -- they serve another purpose -- the unit will be hardwired to my LAN.
    2.  Upgraded HD to 500 GB, and installed Lion.  Everything worked fine, I put the project on hold for a couple months to work on other things.
    I went to install the unit on the wall the other day.  Before I did I decided to power it on once more to check all was well before mounting it.
    All of the connections appear to be fine, however... when I power the unit on, I hear the chime but never get any video signal.  I've tried both:
    VGA output using Mini-DVI to HDMI Adapter -- my existing Apple TV supports and this is how I got Lion Installed -- so I know the cables are good.
    Worred that perhaps the Mini-DVI port was bad I also tried the:
    Mini DisplayPort output with a VGA adapter, same result.  I hear the chime and then nothing happens.
    My next steop is to attempt to SSH into the Mini from anther machine.  Before I go this route: Any ideas what I should be looking for or intermediate steps?
    Any help would be appreciated.

    I'd try the SSH and view the logs for last startup, or maybe Target Mode if SSH doesn't work.

Maybe you are looking for