circle with a line on startup

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Level 1

5 points

circle with a line on startup

My snowball iMac will not start. We did a security upgrade and when we restarted it was really slow so we did the disk utilities stuff and it said we had some problems. We then went to the instal disk to do more utility stuff and it would boot but then just freeze. Now when it boots up from the DVD it sits at a gray screen like it should with the apple logo and the loading circle at the bottom, after about 58 seconds, the apple turns into a circle with a line through it and the loading circle keeps spinning. What would cause this? If we try to boot w/o the DVD it sits in gray for a long time and then just flashes the ?/folder thing on the screen.

If you have any ides that could help us that would be great.

Office iMac Home G5, Mac OS X (10.4)

Posted on Sep 28, 2006 5:32 PM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

82,925 points

Sep 29, 2006 12:08 PM in response to John White10

Is your data backed up?

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Answer 2

mrtotes

Level 6

11,836 points

Sep 29, 2006 1:16 PM in response to John White10

John,

Try following the instructions in this article .

mrtotes
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Message was edited by: mrtotes
Sorry a brody, I edited this message to replace with an article which, although not as extensive, does cover 10.4. For everyone's benefit Apple's "OS X won't boot" article states that it only applies to 10.3.9 or earlier. Originally I asked if anyone in the Lounge knew if it still applied.

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

82,925 points

Sep 29, 2006 1:13 PM in response to mrtotes

Been asked before. Never got a reply. But it does seem to apply under certain circumstances in Tiger too.

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Answer 4

John White10 Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 29, 2006 1:39 PM in response to a brody

No it is not

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Answer 5

a brody

Level 10

82,925 points

Sep 29, 2006 5:40 PM in response to John White10

Try using the startup manager to boot off the 10.4 DVD:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106178

repair permissions and disk through the Disk Utility that comes on the second installer screen's Utilities menu.

If you have problems with the disk, it tells me you are having problems that are a catch-22 because you aren't backed up. Always backup before doing updates of any kind. Let me know if you are in that situation and we'll try a couple things.

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Answer 6

John White10 Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 2, 2006 3:04 PM in response to a brody

Thank you for all of the help. I did try all of the suggestions and none of them worked. I even went as fare as switching out the DVD drive. Even after that it still would not read the DVD. Let me tell you that was a trip. What I am doing now came from a suggestion from someone that said I should hook up the iMac to another computer in terminal mode. If the drive is recognize that way try to fix it if not I could loud the OS that way. At this time it seems to work.

Thank you again for all the help.

John

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Answer 7

John White10 Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 10, 2006 11:58 AM in response to John White10

Ok I have some problems again with my old snowball iMac. I was able to reload the OS and not more then two days later the same thing happened. I am able to boot from the disk but as soon as I get it up and running it goes out on me. I run the Disk Utilities and it said " Invalid sibling link" "The volume needs to be repaired" "ERROR: the underlying tasks reported failure on exit"

Is this a bad drive?

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Answer 8

mrtotes

Level 6

11,836 points

Oct 20, 2006 4:05 AM in response to John White10

I'd suggest that either the hard disk is on it's way out or something like Norton Utilities (being a prime example) is corrupting your drive.

mrtotes

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