Odysseus1479

Q: G5 won’t boot from HD

My Power Mac G5 running “Tiger” has suddenly decided it doesn‘t want to boot from the hard drive. I normally leave it on all the time, and when I tried to use it today it wouldn’t respond to the mouse or keyboard; my Studio Display was blackish (not solid black as when it’s powered off). Thinking it had just lost touch with the USB or something, I restarted the system with the power button. It briefly displayed the light-grey screen with the Apple logo, then went black, showing an irregularly blinking solid-block cursor at the top left.

 

I rebooted from the system DVD (no problem) and ran Disk Utility, which found and repaired some minor problems. I then used Startup Disk to choose my TechTool “eDrive” partition, from which I booted (no problem), logged in and ran the “Intermediate“ tests. All the hardware passed; again some volume-structure problems were found and repaired—except that it said Calculator had a file-structure problem and should be deleted. No big deal, I thought, and tried rebooting again. Just as before, after a brief appearance of the Apple logo I get the black screen with blinking cursor. Any suggestions of what to try next?

Dual-core G5 2.3 GHz, Mac OS X (10.4.11), 2.5 GiB RAM

Posted on Jul 18, 2015 4:28 PM

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Q: G5 won’t boot from HD

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  • by BDAqua,

    BDAqua BDAqua Jul 19, 2015 12:01 PM in response to Odysseus1479
    Level 10 (123,618 points)
    Jul 19, 2015 12:01 PM in response to Odysseus1479

    Does it boot to Safe Mode, holding Shift key at bootup?

     

    Does holding alt key at bootup show Boot Choices?

  • by Odysseus1479,

    Odysseus1479 Odysseus1479 Jul 20, 2015 6:12 PM in response to BDAqua
    Level 2 (175 points)
    Jul 20, 2015 6:12 PM in response to BDAqua

    Thanks for getting back to me.

     

    When I booted in Safe Mode, it started from the “eDisk” mini-partition. The main volume wasn’t mounted; I tried Disk Utility but no dice, so the system there was not one of the available choices in Startup Disk. Booting with the option key did show the main system as a choice (the “eDrive“ was highlighted at first); I selected it, then mashed the Shift key immediately after clicking the proceed-arrow. Same behaviour as before: brief appearance of the Apple-logo screen followed by black-with-blinking-block.

  • by BDAqua,

    BDAqua BDAqua Jul 20, 2015 6:47 PM in response to Odysseus1479
    Level 10 (123,618 points)
    Jul 20, 2015 6:47 PM in response to Odysseus1479

    Hmmm, somethings gone teribly wrong on the System Partition.

     

    Not familiar with eDisk, but if it has Disk Utility, see if it can report the blue info icon.

     

    Doyou have another Mac around with Firewire? And does this get a big floating FW symbol if you hold t key at bootup?