IMAC G4 STARTUP FREEZE

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Hi Guys... I purchased an IMac G4 on eBay and imported back to South Africa. The machine worked fine for a couple weeks but soon after the machine froze up a lot especially in safari and a message came up requesting me to restart the mac.

These restart request messages became more and more frequent and eventually the Mac became unusable.

I searched help forums to no end, tried booting in safe mode, tried Pram reset, Pmu reset but nothing has worked.

The issue started when I started installing apps from the PowerPC archive website. I installed apps like open office, firefox and vlc player.

I tried doing a disk verification on the disk utilities application and it took quite a while so I left it to complete and the Mac went into sleep mode and could never awaken at all by either clicking mouse or keyboard. Had to restart by holding power button and that is when everything went to hell. The Mac now freezes on the grey screen with the apple logo and rotating gear but does not start-up os X and the machine just shuts down after 3 or 4 minutes.

I tried to boot from the OS X installation cd by holding option when powering up but the machine does not pick up the cd it only shows the hard drive icon and no disk icon to boot from.

Please can somebody assist me???

Here is my system information:

IMac G4 PPC 17inch , 2003
1.25ghz, 2GB Ram
OS 10.5.8 Leopard
Kingspec 64 GB SSD, model number : KSD-PA25.1064MS
 

Cory Cooper

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Hello and welcome.

I really love those old "iLamp" iMacs!

It sounds like there may be a few issues and I hate to possibly be the bearer of bad news. Hopefully we can still get things back up and running in a normal fashion.

Restart Messages
Were the restart request messages white text on a black background - i.e. a kernel panic?

HD/SSD
That model officially only supports 1 GB of RAM. Depending on the brand and speed of the RAM, that could cause the restart error/kernel panics.

HD/SSD
The upgrade from a HD to the SSD could also be part of the problem. There are very specific steps that have to be followed for those particular iMacs regarding thermal paste and torque of the screws that allow of proper heat dissipation. In addition, that model SSD wasn't designed for use in an older Mac model, although it still may be compatible. Or, maybe some of the cabling got damaged during reassembly, as they are somewhat difficult to service.

Optical Drive
-Did the optical drive work before the issues got worse?
-Which version of the OS X installer disc are you trying to boot from - retail with Leopard graphic, or a grey disc which should say iMac G4 on it?

OS
OS X may have become corrupted because you had to force power off the iMac, thus you are getting the spinning wheel. We need to get the iMac to recognize the installer disc so e can troubleshoot the OS and possibly reinstall.

C
 
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Hi Cory

Restart Message - Yes it is white text on black background in various languages.

HD/SSD - I have the original Macintosh HD that I am considering swopping back out. I also removed the user accessible 1GB RAM module and try to boot without any success.

Optical Drive - Yes optical drive did work before, however, when OS X was booting fine, I did try to do a reinstall by clicking the OS X installer from disk but it did not allow me to. Unfortunately OS X disc I got with the Mac is Non retail and I suspect that is the reason for my inability to boot from this disk.

OS - The Mac does not recognise the install disk when I try to boot from disk. When I restart and hold "c" nothing happens. When I restart and hold "option", it takes to a screen with three icons. Refresh, SSD, and right arrow icon. When I click right arrow icon, it just does the same thing stuck on apple logo screen and then shuts itself down after 2 minutes.

One final step I wanted to try is to boot from Target disk mode. However I don't have a donor Power PC mac with OS leopard. So I'm in a major conundrum. There are unfortunately only Intel macs in South Africa.

I feel that I will have to take it in to a private repair shop to try and do reinstall there, as our apple stores does not offer any support for the older macs :( ...

Hopefully its the SSD that has gone bang and replacing original HD will do the trick. Will update as soon as I have taken it in...
 

Cory Cooper

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Thanks for the additional information.

Restart Messages - That is definitely a kernel panic, so there is something amiss with hardware/software.

HD/SSD - It is good that you have the original HD, but it is a somewhat difficult operation to swap it. Consider my notes from before about thermal paste and screw torque.

Optical Drive/OS - It is probably still working, just not mounting the install disc as it is not compatible with your iMac. What does the disc say on it - does it have a part number printed on it?

Target Disk Mode - You only need another Mac that has a FireWire port to use TDM. You simply boot the iMac in TDM and then connect it to another Mac via a FireWire cable. It will mount on the other Mac's desktop as if it were a FireWire HD. You will then have access to your files to make a copy to another HD.

Apple Store - If they are official Apple Stores, they can't repair the iMac as parts are no longer available. Here in the US, they can still take a look at the Mac and do a basic diagnosis.

I think that is a good idea to take it in to an Apple Authorized Service Center if you have one available. They can give it the once over and figure out where you stand.

Keep us in the loop.

C
 
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Unfortunately there are no Apple approved centres here except the actual Apple stores, but as I mentioned they were unable to assist.

In terms of the install disk, its basically a DVD-R disk with OS 10.5 Leopard written on it with a black marker ie. NOT RETAIL. Also I suspect that the disk cannot install because it is possibly installed on another mac...is this possible ???...I always read about mac os disks being 1 user only.

I have a Mid 2012 MBP, will I be able to create a bootable USB drive on the Intel Mac and use it to try and boot the G4?

Is there website where I can get step by step guidelines to do this. Is it possible with an Intel Mac to PowerPC mac?
 

Cory Cooper

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There may just be an issue with the want that DVD-R install disc was created or the version that it has on it.

Officially licensing for Mac OS X is for one computer, until Lion anyway. Even though the licensing was for one Mac with Leopard, there isn't anything hard coded or a serial number embedded that would prevent installation on multiple Macs.

You won' be cable to create a bootable USB drive, due to the PowerPC Macs not supporting booting from USB drives, only internal or FireWire drives.

Will let you know of any other options I can think of.

C
 
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Sorry I did not understand your first sentence..."There may be an issue with the want that DVD-R"...

Want do mean there??

When I first started having the kernel panics, the Mac was still able to boot up into OS X perfectly after I hit restart. So I initially thought to reinstall from the DVD-R and it gave me an error message. Please see below:

ERROR MESSAGE: "The application Install Mac OS X cannot be used from this volume...To install Mac OS X, please use this application on the Mac OS X installation disk"

As far as I understand, OS leopard was designed to work on both Intel and PowerPC Macs out the box.
So tried to install the from DVD-R I received with the mac onto another perfectly functioning Intel Mac and it gave me the very same error message.

That leads me to believe that the disk is the problem and that is why I am not able to boot from the optical drive.

I have managed to download a dmg installer for OS 10.4 Tiger from a third party website. It says OS 10.4.11 Update combo. Another I downloaded is 10.5.6 Update combo. Both are dmg files.

Any way to utilise one of these to do a fresh reinstall on the G4?? Bad news about the USB...what about firewire??

Can I boot from an Intel Macbook via firewire using these files i downloaded? If yes can you give the steps as to how to get it done.
 
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Cory Cooper

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Sorry...typo - I meant to say: There may just be an issue with the way that DVD-R install disc was created or the version that it has on it. That error message confirms the above.

Mac OS Leopard was designed to work on both PowerPC and Intel, and it was the last version for PowerPC.

Those two DMG files you downloaded are only combo updaters, not full installers, so they cannot be used to install a full copy of Mac OS X. You will need to find an actual Apple retail version of Tiger or Leopard.

Yes, you can boot a G4 via a FireWire HD, just not USB.

Intel Macs require a GUID formatted HD, PowerPC Macs require Apple Partition Map formatted HD to boot from.

C
 
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Ok thanks for the help, I guess I am going to have to source a retail version.

One more question...In your experience, why would the Mac not want to boot into safe mode?? I have tried and it just goes straight to the apple logo screen...Any possible reason for this??

Regards
 

Cory Cooper

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If it won't boot into safe mode, usually there is unrepairable damage to the OS itself or a hardware issue. It can take quite a while to boot into safe mode...how long did you wait?

Try safe mode if your Mac doesn't finish starting up

Make sure you get an actual retail Leopard disc:

retailleopard.png


Sorry this isn't an easy fix. Hopefully a retail disc will allow us to correct the issue and that there isn't any actual hardware issue.

C
 
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When I try to boot into safe mode it just stays on the apple logo screen and then shuts itself down after two minutes or so.

Yes thanks I have found the disk, there are quite a few on EBay, however with shipping fees its makes purchase impractical.

I'm currently searching for someone on EBay that has the disk and some other goodies that I can add to the purchase to make shipping more sensible.
 

Cory Cooper

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If it shuts down like that when booting into safe boot, then it is most likely an unrepairable OS issue at the least.

I hope that a reinstall will correct the issue, but it still could a hardware issue that would make seeking the retail disc a waste of time and money.

I really wish you had a shop there that could do more hardware/software diagnostics for you...would save a lot of time. ;)

Good luck and we'll be here if you need us.

C
 

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