eMac won't start up in safe mode

Welcome, Molly!

The goofy date indicates that the internal back battery--commonly known as the "PRAM" battery--has died. They last 3-6 years if the computer is always connected to wall power, but their life can plummet if you routinelyunplug your eMac at night or use a power strip to cut power to the computer when it's not in use.

The battery is in some retail stores; Radio Shack ("Tandy" outside the US) has the proper battery as their part number 23-026, but it's between US$15-20. You can get them online for under US$5. Example:

3.6v Newer Technology Lithium 1/2 AA PRAM Computer Clock Battery

Even with shipping, it's less than retail stores. That will fix the date/time issue and may--repeat may--fix the startup probelms.

There are a couple of ways to get around the startup issues before you get a new battery:

1) Start the computer from the grey system CD or DVD that came with your computer by holding the "c" key during startup. It will want to install software, but tell it "no" and look at the menu bar. In OS 10.5.8, there should be a "Utilities" menu. One choice is "restart computer" where you can select your hard drive instead of the system CD/DVD. That gets around any corruption of the stored location of the startup volume that was caused by the dead PRAM battery.

2) Lacking the CD or DVD, restart the computer and immediately press and hold the four-key combo: command, option, p, r. Keep holding those keys until you hear a total of three startup chimes. That also resets the computer so it can find your startup volume

The PRAM is user-replaceable. Instructions are here:

How to Replace the Backup Battery

Keep us posted on how the process is going.

Regards,

Allan

Never heard of that trick but, if it works, we can't complain! It's possible that action has a similar effect as the startup key combo I posted.

When you get the new PRAM battery installed, avoid unplugging the computer from wall power. As long as the computer is on wall power, a tiny trickle of current is routed around the power supply to maintain important settings. The battery only has to work when the plug is pulled, as when to you do maintenance or have to move the computer

Some people obsessed with "green"computing make the blanket recommendation to unplug the computer when not is use. This can put Mac users in hot water when the PRAM battery dies prematurely (effect depend on the model; pre-USB Macs were more affected than newer ones)

If you do "About this Mac" from your Apple menu, what does it say about your processor speed? I'm trying to get an idea of which eMac variant you have in case we need to go farther. Some specific variants have "special" issues that can affect trouble-shooting recommendations.

Thread on same issue but with possible solution here:

Re: Will not boot into Safe Modehttps://discussions.apple.com/thread/3750015?answerId=20567714022#20567714022&ac_cid=tw123456#20567714

> when I put my password in the box shakes and the password disappears

Sorry, that is very different from the other suggested topic (Will not boot into Safe Mode).

In this topic, in the opening post:

* the computer does boot, does start

* the user can not log in.

There's an unrelated problem in the opening post but that, too, is unrelated from the safe boot failures detailed in the other topic.