My Imac seems to have died. I turned it on and all I got was a grey screen with a square in the corner with a question mark in i Nothing seems to work. Problem is, I need the info that is on the hard drive. Any idea of what is wrong with it, and/or suggestions as to how I can get the info.
Thanks.
Just had this same problem recently. Not sure what caused it but I just inserted a software restore disk and it “woke it up”.
If it’s what I think it is, it’s the computer’s way of saying it can’t find a System Folder to start up from. The icon I’m familiar with is of a floppy disk or hard drive icon in the middle of the screen with a blinking question mark on it.
Anyway, you can fix this problem by booting from your software install disc (you press C as you start up so that your computer checks the CD drive for a System Folder first). Once your Mac has booted up, go to Startup Disk and select the hard drive you want the computer to start from.
Your hard drive could also be hosed, but I understand there’d be nasty hard drive noises in addition to the blinking question mark.
I tried every which way I could think of with a couple different versions of OS 9 (it’s an original biondi blue imac) and I could not get it to boot from either the CD or from an external HD. Could a dead lithium battery possibly be causeing this problem? The thing is 7 years old with the original battery.
And I assume the software install disc is the same as the OS disc. Am I correct in that assumption?
No funny noises from the hard drive, but I assume they can die in many ways. If the HD is hosed I would have thought the thing would still boot from CD though.
OS 9.1 used to do this a lot when the CMOS battery died. OS 9.2 seems to have been better at remembering the startup folder even if the battery died. We had some G3s that absolutely wouldn’t start up properly if you cleared the parameter RAM under OS 9.1 – you had to boot off the CD and tell it the startup disk. OS 9.2 seemed to fix that particular problem.
The best way to fix this is the above idea to boot off of the OS 9 CD. If you can do this, it is the drive and not the controller (or the CPU or whatever) that is hosed. You can then run Disk Utility to check the drive for errors, and reinstall the OS without overwriting files. If you find disk errors that Disk Utility can’t fix, try again using software like DiskWarrior. If something in the boot sector is dead and the drive is unusable as a bootable drive, the last ditch option may to buy a USB or FireWire external drive, boot from CD to mount the drive, then backup onto the external drive. It almost never comes to this, though. Usually you can fix the drive entirely or it is entirely dead and you have to kiss it buhbye.
If you can’t see the drive when booting from the CD or you can’t boot from CD, it may be your CPU or IDE controller. The iMac is pretty much hosed then. You still may be able to salvage the data if you have another computer lying around. The iMacs have regular ATAPI hard drives, so you can use another newer Mac or even a PC running Linux (with HFS and Mac partition support compiled in). Rip out the old drive (it is not that complicated, just unscrew four case screws and four EMF shield screws, then two holding the drive in), and stick it into another computer.
The hard drive can die in many ways. With a bad platter or head, you get weird noises. With a dead power supply, you get no noises at all – no spool up noises, etc.
It sounds like you have a hardware problem if you can’t boot from anything. Computers with dead batteries would still boot from CDs – it only needs the battery to remember the order of startup disks and such, and by holding down C, you override that. I think my last option of ripping out the drive may be your only option if this is the case.
As an update, I got an older version of the OS, v. 7.6.4 I think. When I inserted this while depressing C I managed to start up, everything worked fine. Then, after I turned it off and tried to restart on a burned copy of the OS (since the original wasn’t mine) it was no go. The I zapped the pram and lo and behold it booted again. The only weird thing that happened was I got a message saying prodos could not read the disc, but I pressed eject and everything seems working fine now. Another couple of points, the time it shows is correct, but I still think the pram battery is dying. I was going to replace it, but found the screw holding the back panel in place is stripped. Also I could find no instructions on exactly how to replace the battery, despite extensive searching of the the apple knowledgebase and the web in general. Is this something I should take to the dealer to do. I will if I have to but it will kill me to spend 100 bucks to put in a 10 dollar battery that should be designed to be easily accessed.
Like I said before I can’t find my original discs. Perhaps trying OS 9 in multiple versions was more than the computer could handle. The earlier version did the trick. Now to just remember NOT to turn the thing off until I have gotten everything I need from it.