Resetting PRAM on 20" imac

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Level 1

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Resetting PRAM on 20" imac

I have just tried resetting the PRAM on my iMac following the instructions given on Apple Support. I held down the cmd, ctrl and P and R keys, but the machine didn't restart after I turned it on (holding down those keys before the grey screen appeared) as described in the AS page, so i'm assuming the PRAM was not reset. Any ideas?

iMac 20" 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Posted on May 16, 2008 5:35 AM

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Answer 1

May 17, 2008 1:37 AM in response to HD2600 Hater

Do you normally hear the boot chime when you startup? Did you hear it when you were holding down the option, cmd, p, r keys? Is there a particular reason you are trying to reset the P-RAM?

George

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Answer 2

HD2600 Hater Author

Level 1

5 points

May 17, 2008 1:59 AM in response to George Peters

I have iStats installed and the GPU temperature is running higher than usual, (between 63 and 68˚) and the whole OS is sluggish at the moment.
The boot chime sounded while I was holding down the keys, but I thought it was supposed to restart 1 more time after the reboot?

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Answer 3

May 17, 2008 2:38 PM in response to HD2600 Hater

When holding down the option, cmd, p, r keys it will not boot up. You should hear the boot chime as if it were restarting again. It's a good idea to keep holding down the keys until you hear the boot chime 3 times then when you let go it should boot up normally. You will need to check your date/time and your startup disk after resetting the P-RAM. Go to System Preferences/Startup Disk and make sure that your OS X system drive/folder is chosen as the startup volume.

The temperature and sluggishness are probably not related. I would start by Opening up Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility select your hard drive on the left hand side then under the First Aid tab click Repair Disk Permissions then Verify the Disk. Can you describe what you mean by sluggish? What applications are you running? How full is your hard drive?

As for temperature If you'd like to keep the temps a bit cooler install SMCFanControl: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/31029 You can use this to slightly increase your internal fan speeds. From my experience this will help keep your iMac running much cooler.

George

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Answer 4

HD2600 Hater Author

Level 1

5 points

May 18, 2008 8:37 AM in response to George Peters

Thanks for the tips, I have used Disk Utility recently to repair permissions, but my HD is over 3/4 full so that could be contributing to the slow app start up times and general responsiveness. I'll take a look at the SMC app as well. The big question is, when is Onyx for Leopard going to be released? That was probably the most useful free app ever made..

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Answer 5

den.thed

Level 9

77,296 points

May 18, 2008 9:12 AM in response to HD2600 Hater

OnyX for Leopard has been out for sometime now: http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html

Leopard auto-runs the maintenance scripts, so I use OnyX less now than I did with Tiger. It's still handy to have around, I use it to make sure that the scripts have run, DU repairs and cleaning.

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Answer 6

May 18, 2008 1:32 PM in response to den.thed

I've been running a test on my iMac at work where I was leaving it on all the time and the scripts were running on schedule. The test is I have been shutting down the computer every night for the last 2 weeks. It stays on for about 8-10 hours per day with some idle time like during lunch or when I'm away from the computer. None of the scripts have run since.

I would do as Dennis suggests, install Onyx and make sure your maintenance scripts have run.

George

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