Boot problems

Question

Level 1

8 points

Boot problems

Hi, First...a confession. I am just coming over from the dark side and canning my PC. While awaiting my new iMac a friend loaned me an old iMac. I think is is a G3 or 4..it has the big basketball sized base on it. The computer booted fine, then an update screen appeared and after the updates loaded, the computer will not boot. I get to the Apple icon and rotating progress indicator. After running through the support topic, I was able to boot to command line (pardon the PC terms) and run fdisk and it indicated no errors on the hard drive. Reboot was not successful. I then went through the procedure where you are able to select your boot drive..it shows the HD icon with an X displayed in thelower right hand corner of that icon. I would like to be able to determine the exact OS installed on this machine. (At least that seems like the best place to start). Any suggestions on how I should proceed.

If any of the techie folks follow this forum..the serial number on the machine is QP3463EKPVX. I didn't think this was supposed to happen on the Mac..<G>

Thanks for any help.

Posted on Apr 10, 2009 5:14 AM

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Answer 1

spudnuty

Level 5

7,116 points

Apr 10, 2009 2:16 PM in response to daleroach

Hey Dale and Welcome to Apple Discussions and the light,
Running your serial number here:
http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html
Shows it to be:
Name: iMac G4 (USB 2.0)
Model: Mxxxx iMac G4 1.25GHz
Bus speed: 167MHz
Screen size: 20 inch
Memory - number of slots: 2
Factory: QP (USA)
Which is a pretty nice machine. Definitely nice display.

The computer booted fine, then an update screen appeared and after the updates loaded, the computer will not boot.

Well in the world of Mac when those updates load the computer will automatically restart. Upon restart you'll see the Apple and the cranking gear. This is equivalent to Windows when you shut down "Windows is installing updates ...etc."
Just as in Windows if that writing of the update is interrupted things can get messed up and like Windows the computer can sit there and crank for quite a while while this is happening. I load those updates, then when I install I walk away from the computer while it happens.
If you have the original system disks or any install disks you could boot from them and look at the hard drive.

..it shows the HD icon with an X displayed in the lower right hand corner of that icon

It should have also told you the version of the OS installed on that drive. The fact that it doesn't makes it appear that the OS got corrupted.
It might be that it needs a reinstall or archive and install to fix the problem.
Richard

Message was edited by: spudnuty

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Answer 2

daleroach Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 10, 2009 5:14 PM in response to spudnuty

LOL...I really don't know why I waited so long. Probably the $. I have a friend that is a Mac guru and he told me exactly what you did. He is being the correct disks (since I have none) and hopefully things will get straightened. The new G5 looks like a heck of a machine. I can't wait. Rot in ****, Bill Gates...

Regards,

Dale

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