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iMac G5 - stuck at blue screen

-- I posted this to the 10.4 forum, but a user suggested to post here, as it may be a hardware issue... --

Hi, I have an iMac G5, which was running 10.4.11. There was a sudden power failure for 1 second during a thunderstorm. Now here is the problem. iMac will not start up past blue screen. I tried the following, but still not able to "restore" the system back into the hard drive.

* Command option+PR (no luck, still blue screen after restart)
* held down SHIFT for safe mode (was able to get in and back up stuff)
* Command+S, fsck -fy, reboot (no luck, still blue screen after restart)
* Started from original installer disk #1 (tried to repair disk, but still blue screen after restart)


As my final attempt, I tried to restore from the installer disk #1, but when I returned to check on the machine, it has a blue screen on it.

I even tried a fresh clean install, but again when I returned to to check on the machine, it had a blue screen on it.

I don't know if it restarted, since I didn't watch the entire disk #1 install.

Is this a hardware issue?
Any do-it-yourself parts that I can try to replace?

PB 15 2.33ghz, 120gb HD, 3GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Aug 16, 2010 10:18 AM

Reply
27 replies

Aug 16, 2010 11:22 AM in response to vc187

If you can run in safe mode without problems, then it probably isn't hardware. However, try starting with the Option key held down and see what boot drives you are presented with. If you have an external firewire drive that you have made into a clone, try starting from that.



User uploaded file

Message was edited by: MGW

Aug 16, 2010 11:43 AM in response to MGW

I have erased the drive, and am trying to reinstall, 10.4 (2 discs). I am having trouble finishing the first disc - it reboots for some reason after doing the install from the fist disc - then it goes back into the blue screen.

It didn't even ask for the 2nd install disc.

Weird.

Aug 17, 2010 12:09 PM in response to MGW

It didn't work! It restarted during the install and hence returned to the blue screen. I tried restarting it and holidng down option to choose the HD, but no go. Short of going to the repair shop - will try one more thing: going to install the OS onto the other partion drive, and boot up the computer from there - and use the computer as the host / shell, as a temporary fix.

Aug 17, 2010 2:03 PM in response to MGW

Ah..

Ok, is it worth $99 to try it? Will it work on PowerPC?

Re: repair shop - this is about 6 years old now, is it worth alteast $200 in repair costs? assuming it is just $200 😉 -- which could be used towards the low end macbook. My wife uses it for email and websurfing only.

Aug 17, 2010 10:03 PM in response to vc187

Ran Disk Warrior 3 = no luck as well, it still cannot get past the blue screen

I did finally manage to install 10.4 on the local drive. I just happened to press SHIFT, when it rebooted, and it asked me to insert the 2nd install disk. So now, OSX is back on the HD.

I can do safe boot, but cannot startup normally still.

I then cloned the fresh install of the OSX to a firewire drive. and can boot from it in safe mode only. The normal startup ends up in the blue screen.

I think I've tried all I can - any other methods to try?

iMac G5 - stuck at blue screen

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