The other evening one of my kids shutdown one of the Macs (G4 iMac OS X 10.3.9) and I think they hit the power switch on the the power strip a little early. The next day when I go to power it up, I get the ‘bong’ and then the Apple logo with a spinning radial thingie but that is as far as it gets. I figure best case is that some boot file got corrupted, worst case is that the hard drive suffered a head crash. Does anyone have any idea if there are any diagnostics I can do. Is there a magic keystroke to get it to open the drive door so I can insert a boot disk. Thanks!
I could have sworn I was in General Questions. Could someone please report this post to a mod. Thanks.
there should be a button on the upper right of the keyboard to open the CD drawer. But you may want to call Apple - are you still under warrantee? AppleCare is great. A few months ago, I had to do an archive and install and they talked me thru each step.
Tried the button. Doesn’t work. I don’t think it is getting far enough into the boot process. This mac is a couple of years old. I don’t think it’s still under warrantee.
I’ve never encountered a Mac that would not start up just from having had the power cut off. That’s no different from if you’re working on the computer and there’s a blackout. Even if, as I understand it, the power loss came during the shutdown process (possible, because it does take way too long).
You should be able to open the CD drawer just by pressing the Eject button on the keyboard (assuming there is one); that process seems to be simply mechanical, not software controlled, so as long as the machine is getting power, the drawer should open.
Otherwise, I would just suggest turning it on and letting it try to boot again. If it’s just hanging, push the reset button and try again. Try it a couple of times; I’ve had Macs that seemed to do nothing on the first reboot suddenly get the message on the second or third try. Don’t know why, just a weird computer thing. If none of that works, then yeah, boot up from the CD and run Disk Utility on the hard drive. (If the Disk Utility does not recognize the hard drive, then you might have a problem. I know–my hard drive crashed late last year, and I had to go through a whole opera to get the thing up and running again. I feel your pain.)
Hope this helps.
I believe that if you hold down the mouse button during bootup, the iMac (all Macs) will eject all removable media and let you insert a boot disc.
another, more direct way to access the optical drive is to boot into Open Firmware…
push the power key and immediately hold down the following 4 keys on the keyboard (it may take both hands…)
Option-Apple-O-F
the machine will boot to a text-based screen that says “Welcome to Open Firmware”
at the command prompt type the following command and hit return;
eject cd
the tray should open, take out the disk and push it closed
from within OF, you can go 4 different directions;
shut-down <return>
machine will shut off
halt <return>
machine will shut off
mac-boot <return>
the Mac will continue booting the Mac OS
reset-nvram <return> (machine will say OK)
reset-all <return> (machine will say Flashing, then Rebooting then reboot)
this last command is an Open Firmware reset, it clears the PRAM and Power Manager settings and forces the machine to reload the default settings, it shouldn’t affect your personal data, and if the hang at boot is cased by corrupted PRAM settings, it should clear those settings
the other thing i’d reccomend is to have a bootable system folder on an external FireWire hard drive (ext. HDD or even a 4th gen or earlier iPod), reboot the machine, hold down the Option key to pull up the Boot Manager, select the pushbutton that represents your external bootable drive and click the right arrow, boot off your emergency drive and run Apple’s Disk Utility, select the hard drive, check the S.M.A.R.T. status indicator at the bottom of DU, the drive might be “failing” (it will be in red text if the drive is failing, if this is the case, back up your drive ASAP and prepare to take the drive to a repair facility for a hard drive replacement
next, select the “First Aid” option, then select “Repair Disk”, let it run, when it’s done, run “Repair Permissions” twice, then try rebooting off your internal drive
i had a similar problem, i have an iBreeze fan cooling stand for my AlBook G4, i had the fans plugged in via USB, and had my iPod Nano connected to the pass-thru connector at the back of the iBreeze (the passthru is USB 1.1), when i woke my machine from sleep, it froze, on reboot, it stopped at the blue screen before the desktop, i booted off a FW drive, repaired permissions, and rebooted fine off the internal
basically the machine had gotten confused, as i had a USB 1.1 device plugged into the side of the Mac, then had a USB 2.0 device plugged into the 1.1 passthru…
Thanks for the replies and suggestions! This’ll keep me busy over the weekend.
Moved to GQ, at request of OP.