Serious startup problem? I'm v. worried!

There is about a 1/5 chance when i startup my mac that this extremely worrying thing happens:
Screen will stay black, but power button stays on
After about 4 minutes the fans will go onto ful power, rivaling the volume of my hoover
This will continue as long as I leave it on for.....
This can't be good....... Please tell me what is happening!

correction: power light stays on
imac G5, 20in Mac OS X (10.4.3)

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Startup problems--time for a new machine?

I have an imac G5 that I bought last February. In the last few weeks I've been experiencing serious startup problems. When turned on, the screen goes gray and the lines and pixels fragment and shimmer. It takes a long time to go to the main screen and often the screen isn't stable and freezes. It takes me eight to ten startups to get the system stable.
I've repaired disk permissions, repaired h-drive, reset Pram. Still a mess. My husband wants me to just get a new one and get something that is not an Apple this time. I'm resisting that.
I don't want to lose all my data and I've backed up what I can but I'm worried the data is corrupted and if I load it on to a new machine, I will experience the same problems.
Any advice? I'm not even sure if this is a hardware or software problem. I'm out of warranty so I am on my own, but I'm frustrated to be having these problems with such a new machine.
Thanks for any advice,
Cassandra
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Cassandra, in addition to Barbara's excellent suggestion: looking to see if you qualify for the program, please make sure that you have an external FireWire drive and clone your drive, (SuperDuper is an excellent choice for backing up, cloning and making scehduled backups).
Let us know how you made out,
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Startup problem with Lion OS 10.7.3

Just recently, I've been experiencing a startup problem with Lion. I don't usually have any issues running my Mac, so I'm at a loss why this is happening now.
I have an Intel Mac Pro running 10.7.3. I usually leaving my Mac running all the time and only restart when the need arises. In addition to being my main computer, this mac alsocontrols a MacMini that serves as a music server thru screen sharing.
This past weekend, I restarted my Mac and could not get past the grey screen. The mac chimes, the apple logo appears with the spinning gear, the blue screen briefly appears, but instead of progressing to the desktop it reverts to the grey screen with a repeating cycle of the spinning gear appearing (spins for a while, stops, disappears, reppears spinning, stops, disappears, over and over) - never progressing beyond that stage.
I decided to reinstall the system and things have been fine for the past few days. Today, restarting again resulting in the same problem.
I've tried several things without success. I disconnected all peripherals, reset the PRAM/SMC, ran Disk Utility from a install volume and ran repair and permissions (no problems reported). Tried safe mode startup - a progress bar appeared but never fully progressed and could not get to the desktop.
Recent changes included updating the OS to 10.7.3 and Adobe Photoshop CS5.5 - no recent hardware changes. No bluetooth devices connected.
Any thoughts? Thanks -

Thanks -
I've reinstalled the OS today and am back up and running.
But, since this is twice this has happened within the past week, I'm worried about might be causing this issue - besides bad luck. My Mac is usually rock solid - can't remember the last time I've had to reinstall the OS in the past few generations of OS X.

KT3V Series MS6712 startup problems

No sooner than my last post about adding new drives, l now have the following problem -
XP Home SP3 (old taxan monitor which still works fine)
When l power on the computer, the Ami bios lists all of it's options, says the drives are connected and then just sits there with that screen showing.
I have to power off and on anything up to ten times before the computer gets over this and starts to access the windows startup.
I thought that it may be the hard drive on it's way out but am not too sure as all checks on it say it's ok.
Now when l power on, the same thing happens but the bios display is totally illegible and shaking so much that it all looks like Greek characters made up of lines and dots.
So then l thought maybe it's the monitor on the way out.
When l do the switch off and on routine and it finally gets into windows, the display is solid as a rock and clear as a bell.
Before you suggest it, I've run every cleaner, malaware, spyware and antivirus possible, and everything comes up clean. It's the initial boot of the bios that seems to be causing the problem.
When l hit DEL to try and access the bios, it is now totally illegible.
The bios is AMI Version 07.00T which has worked perfectly until now.
I'm off to do a check of all the connections but in the meantime, has anyone got any other ideas as to what could be causing this?

At the moment l have an out of date mobo, a KT3V MS-6712 version 10A, which has a Riva TNT2 Model 64/64 pro graphics card plugged into the AGP slot, and an AMD Athlon XP (about a 1.2 - 1.3?) processor. I'm running XP home SP3.
I have serious bios problems but cannot get into it as the display has now gone. It needs taking in to the repairers for checking, but hey, for what they charge in labour l can get a new mobo!
I'm not that up on mobo terminology but the board has served me fine. It has 3 ram slots, 6 pci slots, and 2 ide slots
However, should l ever want Windows 7, it wont work on this board because of the graphics adaptor and also something to do with Direct X not being at a high enough level?
So working backwards, and not having to lay out too much cash, l need an MSI board that will take my existing three sticks of ram (crucial technology DDR PC2700 166mhz) will take my existing processor but will allow for a reasonable upgrade if required,
conform to Windows 7, and a reasonably cheap graphics card. I'm not that bothered about SATA slots and IDE will suit me fine as l can then use my existing IDE drive. If the board has both then even better!
So any MSI board recommendations to look at, what AMD processor (something around 2.5?), and what graphics card for the AGP slot.
Sorry to be really dumb, but hopefully you can supply some suggestions.
Regards

I am having an MacBok Pro 13inch,having an Startup Problem, the time i press the power button after few seconds the apple symbol appears w/a loading sign below it

i am having an MacBook Pro 13inch , having an Startup Problem , the time i press the power button after few seconds the apple symbol appears with a loading sign below it and wont go further ahead of it . My data is all in the hard drive .. . I even tried the Internet recovery but no use !!!! but still no respons and the recovery and macintosh hd is now lock! but earlier only the recovery is lock and after both of them is lock. i can reinstall,... and i didnt try to back up any data bec i dont know how? so please help me to resolve my prroblem.?

luoie wrote:
This thing happend,, it say Disk utility stopped repairing "Macintosh HD" disk utility can't repair this disk
Sorry, possibly you need a new hard drive or try reformating. First
you can try something like http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/ it has been known to repair disk that DiskUtility could not. YMMV and they don't give it away.
If Disk Warrior can not repair then you need to Reformate the drive. Make sure you have a back-up in place no matter what.
http://www.apple.com/support/backup/
Disk Utility will tell you something about it's SMART status:

I am having a Startup problem. Someone comes on the screen with Open Firmware to Startup. How can I reset the PRAM myself to solve this problem?

I am having a Startup problem. Someone comes on the screen with Open Firmware to Startup. How can I reset the PRAM myself to solve this problem?

Read these.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1431
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10330118-263.html

Dual Monitor Startup Problem on MacPro - Solved

I have a model 53135LL/A = mid 2010 MacPro with 8 cores, DUAL monitor cards and monitors, 24GB memory, running Lion 10.7.3. It is important to note that I am also using the Apple bluetooth Magic Mouse and the smaller, bluetooth keyboard (no numeric keypad). This unit was supplied with Lion in December 2011 and has had a startup problem from the beginning as follows:
1 - when starting from a cold start the dual monitor positions are reversed from the correct position
2 - additionally the USB and firewire connected devices (e.g. Wacom tablet, 2 card readers) do not function properly.
The workaround for me has been to start the system, wait for the logon screen, then click restart. Upon restart everything comes up and functions correctly.
Specifics on my setup and starting problems:
1 - My main monitor (Monitor #2) is a large gamut monitor that is located to the right. This monitor is connected to card slot 1 as that is the faster card slot (pcx16). The second monitor (Monitor #1) is an ordinary unit and connected to card slot 2 (pcx4). The monitors are set up as an extended desktop.
2. The Wacom tablet (Intuous 3 wide) is connected to USB port on rear of machine. CF card reader by Delkin is connected to Firewire on rear of machine, and an SD card reader is connected to USB on the rear of the machine.
3. My dock is positioned on the left side of the left monitor. The menu bar is along the top of the left monitor, and all desktop icons are on the left monitor. The right monitor has no items on it.
On a typical cold start, as mentioned above, the apple logo appears on the right and then the logon screen appears on the right.
If I proceed to logon at that point, all the desktop items move to the right monitor and the computer thinks the positions are reversed. In other words, it behaves as though the right monitor (#2) is on the left of the desktop and left monitor (#1) is on the right.
Additionally, the Wacom tablet using either pen or mouse does not map over the full desktop range. If I use either card reader and then eject the card, no further card insertions will be recognized.
To fix this, I simply restart the machine thru the apple menu and everything comes up correctly.
I had discovered, that instead of completing the logon on a bad cold start, I could simply restart from the logon screen and all would work correctly.
On occasion, the logon screen would come up on the left monitor (as it should do) and in that case, if I log on all works correctly.
I have worked with Apple support on the phone, clearing setup ram etc. Have had the unit in to Apple store for hardware check, all OK. Next suggestion was reload OS and start over - no thanks.
SO - Here is the latest.
If I turn off my keyboard and mouse before starting the machine, then wait for the logon screen to appear - It starts correctly, with the logon screen on the left. I can then turn on my keyboard and mouse and all works as it should.
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mkaito wrote:
That's how dwm behaves. I believe dwm's multihead support is rather lackluster out of the box. You might want to check out some of the patches they have, and ask around in the dwm hackers thread.
I currently have dwm simply draw status on all monitors, but I'm investigating separate status bars per monitor. We'll see where that takes me. Dwm is a tinker's WM!
i found the patch , thanks!

After a startup problem with my macbook pro i put it as slave and formatted the internal Hard drive. Now i want to install OS X Mavericks from USB

After a startup problem with my macbook pro i put it as slave and formatted the internal Hard drive. Now i want to install OS X Mavericks from USB
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In particular, each new page seems to hang for about ten seconds and freeze using Internet Explorer 6. Any fixes?
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http://www.peterlance.com/Peter%20Lance/Home/Home.html
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Welcome to the discussions, TopDog08.
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This image
http://www.peterlance.com/Peter%20Lance/Home/Homefiles/shapeimage50.png
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What you see happening with IE is a java script running to fix IE's problem with png's. The fewer .png's you have, the less of a problem with IE you have.

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Can anyone diagnose my startup problem from this screen pattern?

After failing to startup my Mac on about 8 consecutive attempts today, I finally got it to boot up, and now I'm afraid to turn it off for fear that I won't be able to re-boot.
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http://www.doctorkeys.com/startup-problem-screen.html
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Message was edited by: Bruce Siegel

Hi-
To be honest, though, I was hoping that the pattern in the photo was so specific and common that someone would look at it and say, "Oh, of course! I've seen THAT one before. Do this and your problem is solved."
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One other is if a capacitor on the card has failed, while VRAM failure is another cause.
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Cleaning the gold contacts with 99% isopropyl alcohol and thoroughly dusting the card while it is out is a good idea.
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iAS 9i on Sun Solaris
Oracle 8i (8.1.6) on W2000
http port = 7777
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null

Thanx Mukul,
You're right, mod__ose.conf appears twice in oracle_apache.conf.
Apache http started now.
But still i can't start the page:
http://myhostname:7777/pls/portal30
The DAD for portal30 is configured with Oracle username: portal30
Oracle password: portal30
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error message:Internal Server Error
Instead the page http://myhostname:7777/pls/portal30_sso is starting well.
These messages are in error_log: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.apache.jserv.JServServletManager.load_init(JServServletManager.java:526)
at
org.apache.jserv.JServServletManager.loadServlet(JServServletManager.java:488)
at
org.apache.jserv.JServServletManager.loadStartupServlets(Compiled Code)
at
org.apache.jserv.JServServletManager.init(Compiled Code)
at
org.apache.jserv.JServServletManager.start(Compiled Code)
at
org.apache.jserv.JServServletManager.main(Compiled Code)
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null

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Troubleshooting iMac Startup Problem

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Startup Problem & "Zapping the Pram"

Okay, I'm having startup problems, and I did the Command/Option/P/R startup.
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See http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106388
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh343.html
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107392
for details on starting up in various modes.

Serious startup problem? I'm v. worried!

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