G4 won't boot

D

Dennis Gordon

Gawd
Joined
Sep 13, 2005
Messages
590
In an attempt to get this old G4 (667) running before I opt for a Mini, or toss it out the window...

I pulled this old Mac out last week, hoping to get it running to be able to open some Digital Peformer files. Hooked it up to 4 different monitors with the same results: turn it on, get the chime, screen goes grey...and stays that way. Eventually tire of looking at grey screen and turn computer off. Over and over.

Short of reformatting and reinstalling 10.3, are there any "Safe Mode" tricks I can try to get into the OS?
 
there are many options to try. First thing I'd do is boot off your system disk and o a disk repair.

Here is a list of boot up otions directly from Apple's website. There are also many many others if you google it ;)
 
Dennis Gordon said:
Now where did I bury that system disk....?

Thanks...
Click to expand...

you could try and boot into safe mode (hold shift while booting) or single user mode (command + S) or even verbose (command + V) so you know what's causing it to hang.

If you do get it to boot using one of those methods I'd suggest getting something like Onyx (free) to do some system maintenance.
 
Zapped the pram. Booted into Safe Mode. Currently getting the ? and smiley mac face, but no booting. I'll wait a bit more...
 
If you can get Command+S to work, try typing fsck -yf into the console when it stops loading.
 
Zapped the pram. Booted into Safe Mode. Currently getting the ? and smiley mac face, but no booting. I'll wait a bit more...
 
that means it can't find a boot device. So either your hard drive has gone tits up or the filesystem has gotten corrupt.
 
Yup, the HD is most definitely shot. You'll need a new one, but if you have the system disks, then you should be in good shape. It takes a standard IDE hard drive, so it shouldn't be that expensive, either
 
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