Got nothing but a loud fan sound when I turned on my G5's power this morning. No chime, nothing.
I forced shutdown by holding the power button; then I disconnected the power cord for a minute.
Next boot was completely normal, and it has been running quietly and happily for a couple of hours. (The only thing I did differently was to turn off my external G-Drive before starting up. I seriously doubt that's relevant, but thought I should mention it.)
Should I be concerned? Did it likely just need its PMU reset for some reason (if memory serves as to what the power disconnect does)?
My one other worry about this Mac is that it seems memory-challenged lately, but that happens mostly, if not always, when I have been working on my increasingly media-intensive MySpace profile. The computer has only 1 GB of RAM.
You should always be concerned. Which is why you want to
have backups (2 or more), a bootable backup, an emergency drive, and a copy of Disk Warrior.
Maybe zap the PRAM/NVRAM also next time, but first thing I would do .... boot from a different drive and repair your main drive, and not just with Disk Utility.
I would get a couple WD 640GB drives $76 each (and fast for boot, scratch, media) along with at least 3GB RAM.
Well, 1 GB of RAM will result in the system running slower once the machine uses up the RAM and starts writing back to the drive.
Just unplugging it does not reset the PMU. There's actually a little button behind the front fans you can press. See this page for more information:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1939
Does the unit keep time properly? It may be a dying PRAM battery. Either way, be sure to keep any vital data backed up.
Thanks. I have a bootable sector on my 500 GB G-drive (it's not yet updated from Tiger to Leopard but I would think that's neither here nor there?). That sector is shown in Startup Disk in sysprefs so it's recognized as bootable I guess. Hmmm. I forget: should my G5 have jumped to that drive to attempt start-up if/when it was unable to start from its internal drive this morning? Even if so, isn't it possible that something prevented the computer from booting from any drive at all? (I'm just trying to get in the diagnostic ballpark here...)
A few minutes ago I shut down completely, switched the G-drive back on, and powered up the G5, and again it booted just fine. So it really doesn't seem like the G-drive was to blame for the incident this morning (except, see above).
I'll go off in a little while and see if I can do a Disk Utility repair from the external drive. I've been resisting the Disk Warrior expense for a long time... you know how things are these days. Can't let your computer, house, car, pets, etc. nickel and dime you to death with tweaks, upgrades and indulgences. I keep thinking I'll just buy it if and when I reach the "all else fails" stage of something.
Re: additional drives, are you implying you think Western Digital is better than G-Tech? Or just (a lot) cheaper? ๐
Your choice, ounce of prevention vs pound of cure.
Best to have backups before there is potential loss, right?
And preventative maintenance with Disk Warrior might have prevented your current problem, or might need to replace a drive.
Just because it seems okay and boots doesn't tell you if the tire tread is worn or if you are on thin ice.
Make sure you have an emergency boot partition (30GB) that has Leopard and latest version of DU, AND that you have a bootable backup. And you may want to be backing up with TimeMachine as well.
Waiting for a problem to get worse usually costs more, and reduces the chance of success.
Jump? you mean if you hold down the Option key, you can force it to boot from some other media.
Additionally to the great advice you've already been given, I was told that removing the power plug for a few minutes and then putting it back in again can reset your PMU/SMU on some macs. Oops, here we go... you might have fixed it just by doing that:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1436
But as the Hatter said, more or less, back up, back up, and later in the day, backup. I imagine you're using Time Machine, if not you should. And since you indicate you have space for an additional start-up disc, here's a free app for making perfectly identical copies, or clones of your current system
Here
Edit: Pets? They and children are about the only thing
to waste every nickel and dime on. ๐
And oops, again, I've conflicted with the post above. Well, I believe the Apple docs if they are applicable.
And yeah, Google OWC and see if you can get more RAM from them. Excellent company and prices are pretty remarkable. Good luck.
Yes, it's my impression the PMU/SMU is reset by disconnecting from power on this particular Mac. I think I had to look into that in the early days when I was going through some torture that ended with finding out that my processor was defective (Apple replaced it).
FYI, all, I'm not a newbie--I'm a Mac user since 1991. ๐ I do use Time Machine, backing up hourly to a dedicated partition on the G-drive, which also has another, bootable partition that is a complete copy of what was on my internal drive a couple of months ago just before I upgraded to Leopard. So, I have some bootable backup, and I have full current backups, but I don't have full, current, bootable, Leopard backup, and I don't have the backup drive backed up. No one's perfect ๐.
As for economizing on pets, Samsara, not to worry about me walking that walk much--my two very senior felines get a very generous share of the household budget for their carefully sourced homemade raw-meat diet, expensive consultations with a veterinary homeopath, yada yada. Where they're concerned, nickel-and-dime resistance means not buying the 14th cushy new 100% cotton throw rug for them to lounge on, LOL.
As for economizing on pets, Samsara, not to worry about me walking that walk much--my two very senior felines get a very generous share of the household budget
Well, I actually have two main expenses, my cats and my mac. TG, I can't think of another thing to buy for my mac. As for my four cats, one I took to the vet the other day for amox and ear drops, she was a farm kitty, and it cost $180.
But actually I'd sell my mac and whatever else I have to take care of my pets.
Aren't you watching the Colbert show? Oops, few seconds to ending.
I haven't seen that particular series. I have to be careful with things like that though, the last funny cat video I saw was with someone making their cat turn round and round, I think with a laser pointer. The cat got so dizzy that it fell from a table onto the floor. I didn't that was funny. People can do cruel things to their pets for a laugh.
But I do remember two I thought stood out from a couple years ago. One was with a cat getting beaned by a bird and doing a flip while casually walking across a yard. The other was of a cat getting tossed in the air and it stuck to the ceiling by it's claws. I just hope the last one wasn't the 75th take.
I'll see if that series is shown here and I'll give it a go. I have to be careful with various nature programs these days as well, the cruelty in Nature is almost incomprehensible. But I did see a recent one that was pretty fascinating, I bet you saw it too. It was with lions, water buffalos, and crocodiles. There was a happy ending to that one. ๐
And looking back, I'd like to apologize to you, Nina... I was pretty condescending to someone with your knowledge. ๐
Anyone see the Colbert Christmas Special last night? Good overall with a great bit with Jon Stewart. ๐
I get very upset with torture ๐ -
especially pets. My family is nuts about cats.
There are lots of cute sites devoted to pets, one is devoted to one guys cat,
http://www.omgkitty.com/
I think Tidbits editor has their family cats page,
"Cute Overload"
http://www.cuteoverload.com/ which came out with daily calendar etc (I saved over 1000 of favorites). And safe for children and just good, clean fun.
Scottish Fold in the first, that's interesting, he obviously loves his cat.
Cute Overload, it's Marmoset day!
Roomba kitty, that was cool. Reminds me of my best cat ever, Sam, as in Samsara (Sara was another cat). I put a string on a shoebox and he would jump in and let me pull him around all over the place. Same cat that went for canoe rides, chased deer, and defended me against two rather vicious terriers. I lost him a year ago and I literally miss him ever day. But I know in my heart I'll see him again, God is good.
I love all animals, except hyenas; they are pretty disturbed animals, too human like.
Read of an online suicide the other day of a depressed individual with a webcam. Some people tried to talk him out of it, but some cheered him on. Human hyenas...
Well, surprise surprise, it did it again, following an abrupt crash of Firefox when I clicked on a link in Google Reader--one of Google's own functions, mind you, not my RSS junk. ๐ Same deal: seemed to power on but then just fidgeted, no chime, and finally the fans would roar up and I'd have to force shutdown by holding the power button.
And this time, it really freaked out. At first it would boot if I held down the shift key, but that only seemed to work about three times. (The Apple tech who discharged it last night said it was probably just being a diva and the shift key only SEEMED to be making it boot.) I can't remember whether I ever succeeded in making it boot from the system DVD; it never would boot from the Leopard-enabled partition on my external drive, although various views clearly show this sector to be bootable. When it wouldn't do that and I didn't know how to reset the startup drive, I gave up, put it in its box, and made a quick drop to Apple.
One week later, it's back, and it's up, but we don't know what happened. Just like a car on the fritz, it booted fine at the Apple store. Many times, under duress, they tell me. Two different techs phoned me about it, and the second one spent a lot of time on the phone with me to make sure no possible culprit had gone unmentioned. All possible diagnostic routines were thoroughly implemented, I'm told, and they found nothing. Nor was there anything in the logs to indicate that the power supply had been failing. What I get from my conversation with the second guy and the guy who handled the discharge is that this was one of those things that can't be diagnosed if it's not happening. Some kind of intermittent flakiness, most likely on the part of the logic board. Both said I might have gotten out of the jam by pushing the reset button on the logic board, and the last guy showed me where it was and gave me something nonconducting to poke it with. ๐ (I forgot to ask him to explain why that remedy was different from disconnecting the power cord, which IS--they acknowledged--supposed to reset the PMU on this model.)
You gotta love Apple culture. I was treated very kindly and attentively throughout, up to and including the young man who was deployed to roll the G5 out of the store and handle the awkward and strenuous task of getting it situated (wheels and all) on the back seat of my little old two-door automobile. (
Edit: And, I neglected to mention, they charged me a grand total of nothing.)
I'm reporting all this mainly in case it might help anyone else, but if anyone has any thoughts about what happened and/or how to prevent recurrence, I'm all ears. Ditto re: Leopard versions, which I'm about to go research in the discussions now. At some point during last weekend's struggle I put the machine back to 10.5, and obviously I should update that, but I have my doubts about 10.5.6 and am wondering if I should just do 10.5.5 for now. Opinions welcome (but I'm not going to sweat that decision for more than about an hour.)
Kudos to my PowerMac 7600, which got me through the week quite ably for a 1996 model with nothing more than minor RAM and storage upgrades. It is a grand old workhorse if ever there was one.
We've been talking about how a corrupt drive can prevent booting from any bootable device. Which is likely what you are seeing here. But I wouldn't continue to use it, either.
G5s went from a PMU reset button, to SMU, and then the last quad/dual-core series have SMC.
Shift key is suppose to run diskutil and fsck command, verify and check for dirty laundry (filesystem) and clean things up, and not load 3rd party driver extensions or startup processes. But it isn't a substitute for single user mode and manually running fsck a couple times; or booting from a drive with the lastest Disk Utility; or the latest Disk Warrior.
But sometimes you just have to pull the drive, restore to another drive from backup image. Then deal with the bum drive. If it does prevent booting then putting it in external case and using FW/USB is likely to be only method that will work.
Considering how Google's Chrome is still swating nasty vulnerabilities and security bugs I have it on a 12 foot leash on anything with "Google" in it (other than search engine which is hard to avoid).
Thanks. Any idea what would be wrong with the drive that Apple's diagnostics don't detect?
Also, do you have any favorites in the internal HD realm? I was researching that recently, thinking I might order another drive for the empty bay at the same time that I was going to order some more RAM (from OWC, probably). But I find it very challenging to determine the best bet among Western Digital, Hitachi, Samsung and (perhaps more questionable now) Seagate, not to mention all their **** flavors. ๐ I was leaning toward Hitachi but there is a lot of talk about them running hot that makes me nervous.
Nothing against Apple Diagnostics but the best utility is WD's own for their drives, which are only available for linux and Windows.
All I know right now, is you have trouble, it would be a wise idea to go into Disk Utility Partition and change that to a new partition scheme to insure it writes new partition tables, and to zero the drive.
