G5 hangs at grey startup screen

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G5 hangs at grey startup screen

Acquaintence brought me her machine and said help! Machine is frozen and won't start up. She said before the last power off that it was acting "funny" (highly technical term). She thought it had a virus!

Looked at dozens of postings on this topic but didn't find one that fit my problem. Upon powering on the machine it goes to the light grey screen with the apple logo and just sits. No key combinations on startup work (open firmware, reset pram, "c" startup from CD). Almost like it isn't recognizing the keyboard. I know the keyboard is good (pulled it from a working unit).

There was a CD (Original system disk 10.3.5) in the machine and ended up having to use the old paperclip trick to get it out. I even tried putting in the Tiger DVD this way, but the G5 just ignores it (spins up, but doesn't launch).

I have reset the PMU.

Any ideas?

G5 dual 2.0, Mac OS X (10.4)

Posted on Mar 29, 2006 7:46 PM

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Answer 1

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Denier-of-Soup

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Mar 29, 2006 8:14 PM in response to Marc Pinnell

It isn't a Bluetooth keyboard, is it? They don't connect to the computer until a few seconds after the OS has loaded up. If it isn't Bluetooth, you can try doing a verbose startup by pressing Command-V during boot.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

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Answer 2

Mar 29, 2006 8:24 PM in response to Marc Pinnell

Do things in Apple doc.#106464 help at all?

Cheers!
DALE

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Answer 3

Marc Pinnell Author

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Mar 30, 2006 10:54 AM in response to Marc Pinnell

Hey, thanks for the suggestions, but unfortunately nothing seems to work. I had already gone through the tech note about all the various hangs to no avail. I tried the verbose just now, but the computer just goes straight to the grey screen with the dark grey apple.

It is really like it just doesn't see the keyboard.

Any other ideas?

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Answer 4

Mar 30, 2006 11:34 AM in response to Marc Pinnell

Have you tried plugging the keyboard into different USB ports (including the front one)? I'd also try a different keyboard as well.

As you say, you can't even get to verbose mode by using the keyboard combination, so I'd agree that it's not seeing the keyboard for some reason.

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Answer 5

Marc Pinnell Author

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Mar 30, 2006 11:54 AM in response to Steve Boultbee

Hmmm.... Ok, different keyboard and/or port didn't help. Tried all three ports, two keyboards.

HOWEVER, as a last ditch idea. I disconnected the hard drive (it only has one) and guess what starts up fine on the DVD now! Keyboard is working fine.

Bad drive of some type? Can I reconnect the hard drive with the machine running? Or is that a no-no.

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Answer 6

Mar 30, 2006 12:11 PM in response to Marc Pinnell

I wouldn't reconnect the hard drive with the machine running. Best to shut down before doing that.

It's possible the cables were coming loose on the drive, but not likely.

Perhaps try reconnecting the drive and putting her G5 into Target Disk Mode. If it'll do this, you might be able to see if the drive has issues by running something like Disk Utility or DiskWarrior on it from the computer it's plugged into.

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Answer 7

Marc Pinnell Author

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Mar 30, 2006 12:23 PM in response to Steve Boultbee

No joy. As soon as I plug the drive back in and fire it up, it goes back to the same old behavior. I'm wondering if the drive might be toast and it is causing the machine to hang waiting for it?

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Answer 8

Marc Pinnell Author

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Mar 31, 2006 10:08 AM in response to Marc Pinnell

Ok, got some life back. Replaced the drive with a new SATA drive and I can now get it started up. Ran the hardware test and it is reporting bad ram in J14... On to the next step....

Thanx all for the help.

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