HELP! Power Mac G5 won't load past grey screen.

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Level 1

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HELP! Power Mac G5 won't load past grey screen.

Hi all,

I have a 2004/5 Power Mac G5 which i use primarily as storage for my music and movies as i have a Macbook Pro for my music production/design software. I was watching a movie using VLC a couple of days ago and as i minimised from full screen to window view it froze. I left it for about 10 minutes to let it calm down and work out what it was doing but to no avail. I switched it off by depressing the power button for a few seconds and left it to cool for a further 10 or so minutes. When i went to turn it on again, the normal mac start up sound plays and it goes to the grey loading screen where it then stays with the loading wheel.

I have a 1Tb HDD in the one bay for my music and films, and a 160gb one in the other that i use to run my OS and startup from.

I have read through a few other threads on the same subject and have tried the following to see if it can be fixed:

1. I reset the power control switch on the motherboard - no luck.

2. I checked to see that the display card/ram cards/HDD were all seated properly - no luck

It is not the end of the world if it has just come to the end of its life as all of my important stuff is on my MacBook Pro and backed up. However, i would really appreciate it if i could have the several hundred films and thousands of songs that are stored away on my G5 accesible again.

Many thanks,

Sam.

PowerMac, Mac OS X (10.4.1), G5

Posted on Dec 8, 2011 3:03 PM

Reply

Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

239,141 points

Dec 8, 2011 4:04 PM in response to PoggoWheyyy

Hi Sam,

Does it boot from the Install Disc holding the c key down?

Could be many things, we should start with this...

"Try Disk Utility

1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.

2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at the top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)

Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.

3. Click the First Aid tab.

4. Select your Mac OS X volume.

5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.

(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)

Does it boot into any of these modes?

Holding Option/alt key at bootup.

Holding SHIFT key at bootup.

Target mode...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

Does it boot to Single User Mode, CMD+s keys at bootup, if so try...

/sbin/fsck -fy

Repeat until it shows no errors fixed.

(Space between fsck AND -fy important).

Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214