Old iMac

A few days ago, someone asked how to change their Apple Discussions "name". The short answer is, you can't, since that's the name you used to sign up. Same for your email address.

Since you have only 5 post, suggest you re-sign up with Apple Discussions. You may have to change your name slightly & enter the correct email address.

Cheers, Tom

This link describes your problem.

A flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58042

There are several things that may cause/correct the blinking ?.

1. Try zapping PRAM.

2. There may not be a System installed on the hard drive or it has corruption.

3. The hard drive has failed.

If the iMac has not been plugged in to AC power for a while, the internal memory battery may have failed or is week, and needs replacement. Check this site for battery part numbers and sources. Mac PRAM, NVRAM, CUDA/PMU & Battery Tutorial

Will the iMac boot up using the Install or Restore CDs if you insert the CD & depress the "C" key at startup?

Cheers, Tom

Kevin, download the iMac's User Manuals from this link. The manuals will explain a lot of what you need to know. Overall, the Mac is much easier to set up/use than PCs/Windows.
http://www.apple.com/support/manuals/imac/

Cheers, Tom

Hi, Kevin -

You can correct (change) the email address associated with your Mac Support and Discussions account even though you can not alter the name on that account. Since it is a global for Apple Support, there is no item in Discussions Preferences to do that (though the forum masters really ought to have added a link to where it can be changed).

To change the email address, click the Support tab at the top of this page; on that page scroll down to the section in the RH sidebar "For Your Information", and click the link "I need to update my contact info"; in the new page, above the "Continue" button look for and click the "change" link.

You can get to that last page directly with this link - http://myinfo.apple.com/

Keven the Restore CD will wipe everything off the system. What are you trying to do?

To troubleshoot, boot from the System INSTALL CD while holding down the "c" key.

When you boot from a Mac "System CD" the CD becomes your HD.

Put the *Restore CD* up in a safe place so you will not lose it.

Hi, Kevin -

When you boot to the CD, run Drive Setup from the Utilities folder on the CD. Does the drive appear in the list in Drive Setup's initial window? It should appear, either with the name given to it previously, or as "not itialized" or something similar to that.

• If it does appear, select it by clicking on it once, then select zero-all-data from the Initialization Options item in the Functions menu, and then click the Initialize button - choose Mac OS Extended as the format when asked. Once that's done the disk should be mounted on the desktop, and you can then run the installer to get a working OS back on the drive. Note that zero-all-data can take a while, about one hour per each 10GB of drive size.
Using Drive Setup

• If the drive does not appear in Drive Setup's list, then the cabling to the drive has loosened or is not secure in some way; or, the jumpers to the drive have become dislodged (doubtful); or, the drive is toast and needs to be replaced.

***

If you do need to replace the drive, note the information in this Apple KBase article -
Article #25249 - Gray or White Screen After Hard Drive Upgrade

IMac models 350MHz and slower are subject to an 8GB restriction - all OS's must be installed within the first 8 GB of the drive. This means partitioning an 8GB or larger drive such that the first partition does not exceed 8GB - 7.7GB is a safe partition size.

OSX installers will check for that on models subject to the restriction; stand-alone OS 9 installers will not.