Boot problem after OS reinstall

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Level 1

8 points

Boot problem after OS reinstall

Hi

Because I had overwritten the original hard drive containing the original OS on my old Power Mac G5, Dual 2.7Ghz. (I was going to sell or trade it in), I formatted a new 500 GB drive (yes, in correct partition format for power macs), and attempted to reinstall from the disc set it came with. That proved impossible (three disc set, Panther, 10.3.4). I was eventually able to install Tiger, but can only boot up in safe mode. Any attempt to boot up normally results in either a black screen with curser in left upper corner, or, if I try to boot from the Leopard install disc, in a light blue screen. The machine also starts to heat up after a short while, spinning the fans at high speed. I have to shot it down via forced shot down (power button).

In safe mode, the machine seems to function properly. I was able to update Tiger all the way to 10.4.11.

If I remember correctly, I was running Leopard on this machine just before I bought my Mac Pro, which I replaced it with. I think I was using the Cinema display with powered DVI adaptor on it as well. The graphics card is a GeForce 6800 GT, 256 MB VRAM, dual display connectors (DVI). It is a replacement. The card that the computer came with I think was an ATI card with ADC port, but it burned up and was replaced by Apple with this one.

So, does anybody have any idea what's going on here? I have a suspicion that it may have something to do with firmware incompatibility of the video card with Tiger, since I had upgraded to Leopard before I shut the machine down, but I have found nothing on Apple's support pages to corroborate this.

Thanks

HU

PowerMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), Dual 2.7 Ghz, 4GB RAM

Posted on Jan 10, 2012 5:06 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

239,111 points

Jan 10, 2012 5:27 PM in response to Harti

One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...

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

Reboot, test again.

If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some hardware problem like Video card, (Quartz is turned off in Safe Mode), or Airport, or 3rd party add-on, Check System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items window to see if it or something relevant is listed.

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Answer 2

Harti Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 11, 2012 3:36 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for the advice. I have been able to use Safe Boot, and Save Boot only, to "get in". I was able to follow the advice of someone else who had the same problem and unplug everything (including the power cable), wait a while, the hit the power button while the monitor was not plugged in, wait a little while, the connect the monitor cable, and the computer had actually booted regularely. Prior to doing that, I had repaired the permissions. But this worked only once.

I was now able to install Leopard and I am in the process of downloading, then installing all the updates for that OS. Every time I restart to complete the update, the machine boots to a blue screen, from which I have to force a shut down, then reboot into Safe Boot to be able to download and install the next update. I too believe this to be a video card issue, I just don't know if it's a broken card of if it may have to do something with the firmware that the card is running (see my original post). The reason for that assumption is that I was actually able to eject a disk from the computer by using the key board command for it while the blue screen was up. That would mean (to my simple mind anyway), that computer had finished it's boot sequence, I guess.

So, if anybody has any other ideas/experiences, please let me know.

Thanks anyway.

HU

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Answer 3

japamac

Level 7

24,400 points

Jan 11, 2012 4:00 PM in response to Harti

What is the make and data rate of the hard drive?

If the drive is a 6 Gbps drive, then you need to apply a jumper to pins 5 and 6 if WD. Other, more insidious firmware issues may be at play if Seagate.

If the drive is a "green" drive, then you need to rethink the drive choice; 7200 RPM or greater ONLY for boot drive. 5200-5400 drives don't belong there.

The Geforce 6800 GT will only have incompatibility with OS versions before 10.3.5. After that, all necessary drivers are native to OS X.

Did you see this article?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1545

A common source of blue screen issues is in Startup and Login items:

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/startupitems.html

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

239,111 points

Jan 11, 2012 4:10 PM in response to Harti

Besides japamac's great advice, it could easily be the Video card.

One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...

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

Reboot, test again.

If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some hardware problem like Video card, (Quartz is turned off in Safe Mode), or Airport.

Reply