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imac early 2008 el capitan booting problem

Hi everyone.

I need some help.

A few days ago during use, my mac hung itself. Force quit did not work so i needed to shut it down on the power key. From that point on i cannot get it boot up again other than in safe boot. i believe i tried every thing and ran out of ideas. So i hope that someone has a solution.

I started it with cmd r and ran first aid. No problem.

I started it with option cmd p r

I ran apple hardware test no problem.

I cleared Cache

I repaired disk permissions

I re-installed os el capitan

I erased the disk and re-installed el capitan

I changed the disk with a new one and installed os mavericks

I updated os mavericks to el capitan

All four led lights are switched on the logic board when i press the power key.

The battery on the logic board has 3V.

Etrecheck reports no obvious problem. Here is the copy of the report.


Hardware Information:

 iMac (2008) - Obsolete!

 iMac Model: iMac8,1

1 2,66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (Duo) CPU: 2-core

4 GB RAM - At maximum

BANK 0/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800  ok

BANK 1/DIMM1 - 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800  ok

Video Information:

ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro - VRAM: 256 MB

 iMac 1680 x 1050

Drives:

disk0 - CT480BX500SSD1 480.10 GB (Solid State - TRIM: No)

Internal SATA 3 Gigabit Serial ATA

disk0s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

disk0s2 - Macintosh HD (Journaled HFS+) 479.24 GB (12.62 GB used)

disk0s3 - Recovery HD (Journaled HFS+) [Recovery] 650 MB

Mounted Volumes:

disk0s2 - Macintosh HD 479.24 GB (466.36 GB free)

Journaled HFS+

Mount point: /

Network:

Interface en0: Ethernet

Interface fw0: FireWire

Interface en1: Wi-Fi

802.11 a/b/g/n

Interface en2: Bluetooth PAN

System Software:

OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 (15G22010) 

Time since boot: Less than an hour

Safe Mode: Enabled

Notifications:

Notifications not available without Full Drive Access.

Security:

Gatekeeper: Enabled

System Integrity Protection: Enabled

System Launch Agents:

[Not Loaded] 7 Apple tasks

[Loaded] 168 Apple tasks

[Running] 65 Apple tasks

System Launch Daemons:

[Not Loaded] 47 Apple tasks

[Loaded] 161 Apple tasks

[Running] 82 Apple tasks

[Other] 2 Apple tasks

Launch Daemons:

[Not Loaded] com.apple.installer.osmessagetracing.plist (Apple - installed 2018-06-29)

Internet Plug-ins:

Default Browser: 601 (Apple - installed 2016-07-09)

Audio Plug-ins:

BluetoothAudioPlugIn: 4.4.6 (Apple - installed 2019-06-27)

AirPlay: 2.0 (Apple - installed 2019-06-27)

AppleAVBAudio: 406.1 (Apple - installed 2019-06-27)

iSightAudio: 7.7.3 (Apple - installed 2019-06-27)

Time Machine:

Time Machine Not Configured!

Performance:

System Load: 5.15 (1 min ago) 2.86 (5 min ago) 2.67 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O speed: 12.30 MB/s

File system: 47.80 seconds

Write speed:  239 MB/s

Read speed:  270 MB/s

CPU Usage Snapshot:

Type Overall

System 2 %

User 14 %

Idle 84 %

Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:

Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)

EtreCheck 24.58 % (App Store)

Other processes 7.37 % (?)

Dock 0.03 % (Apple)

cloudd 0.01 % (Apple)

sharingd 0.01 % (Apple)

Top Processes Snapshot by Memory:

Process (count) RAM usage (Source - Location)

EtreCheck 286 MB (App Store)

Finder 73 MB (Apple)

Spotlight 71 MB (Apple)

Safari 66 MB (Apple)

iconservicesagent 37 MB (Apple)

Virtual Memory Information:

Physical RAM: 4 GB

Free RAM: 192 MB

Used RAM: 2.30 GB

Cached files: 1.51 GB

Available RAM: 1.70 GB

Swap Used: 94 MB

Software Installs (past 30 days):

Install Date Name (Version)

2019-06-27 Security Update 2016-004 (10.9.5)

2019-06-27 EtreCheck (5.2)

2019-06-27 Security Update 2018-004 (10.11.6)

2019-06-27 iTunes (12.8.2)

2019-06-27 Safari (11.1.2)

2019-06-27 XProtectPlistConfigData (2103)

2019-06-27 MRTConfigData (1.42)

2019-06-27 Gatekeeper Configuration Data (170)

Diagnostics Information (past 7 days):

Directory /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports is not accessible.

 Enable Full Drive Access to see more information.


Thank you in advance for any sort of help


iMac, OS X 10.11

Posted on Jun 27, 2019 10:52 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 4, 2019 4:50 AM

Sorry for not answering i had other stuff to do. Everything i tried did not work i also tried external hdd in installed a new hdd.

I could not boot Mavericks.

So guys the solution was in took out the graphic card put it in the oven for 10 minutes on 200 assembled my mac and tried it

and it works i have a faulty graphics card. Now it works we will see for how long. Thank you all for the time and help

5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 4, 2019 4:50 AM in response to arne286

Sorry for not answering i had other stuff to do. Everything i tried did not work i also tried external hdd in installed a new hdd.

I could not boot Mavericks.

So guys the solution was in took out the graphic card put it in the oven for 10 minutes on 200 assembled my mac and tried it

and it works i have a faulty graphics card. Now it works we will see for how long. Thank you all for the time and help

Jun 28, 2019 8:21 AM in response to arne286

Just a guess: you 2008 iMac uses a platter drive. I'd think its worn out and needs replaced. To test install a compatible system to an external drive and if that iMac boots then see if you can run the machine from the external or if you can then replace the internal drive , hopefully with a fast SSD. Although the SSD will not take advantage or modern technology specs but it will be substantially faster than inserting another platter drive.

Jun 28, 2019 7:11 PM in response to arne286

So from your post am I to gather that you were successful booting Mavericks, but after upgrading to El Capitan you could no longer boot normally except in Safe Mode?


Did the problem also happen while running just a clean OS with no third party software and no migration of User accounts, settings or apps or recovery from a backup? If you installed anything or migrated accounts, settings or apps, then one of these items is at fault which is why Safe Mode works.

imac early 2008 el capitan booting problem

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