10.4.3 Can't boot

Joined
Nov 29, 2005
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Hi Everyone!

I am a HS EMC director and I was recently able to add 21 new iMacs (they are not the brand new ones with the built in iSight, these were purchased over the summer) to an all PC school, very exciting!! :)

I am having problems with one of them and was wondering is anyone has any ideas.

During the past 14 days I have had boot problems with one iMac. The first time, a student was working and I think he tried to access too many resources; it froze the system and I wasn't able to force quit any applications. I restarted by holding in the power key and waited 20 seconds to restart. When I did that, the fan kicked up into high and I reached a black screen with text flashing very quickly in the upper left hand corner. I tried to start up from a DiskWarrior CD and run tests. Doing so caused it "freeze" during the 5th step and a message came up saying delay was due read malfunction (something along those lines, I don't remember the exact wording), I tried to do it a second time and had the same results. I tried the Apple CD and ran a hardware test; everything came back okay. I reinstalled the system (I don't have a working image yet, this lab is still a work in progress) and everything was okay.

Today I restarted the same iMac from the log-on window and now the fan kicks up into high again but instead of getting stuck at a black screen I an getting stuck at the gray Apple screen with the darker gray pin-wheel spinning (not the beach ball).

Before I go and reinstall the system again, configure it, and reinstall all of the other software, which is very time consuming, I am wondering if anyone has any ideas? Although some of the details are different, I find it strange that the same computer is having a startup/boot problem after just being reloaded. I read someone having a somewhat similar issue under 10.2 and someone thought it was the logic board.
 

Ric

Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
4,245
Reaction score
5
Hi there and welcome !

I presume that you have the latest version of Disk Warrior, any chance of trying to get the exact message as this would help. Without knowing the exact message it may have been a "read Malfunction" of the DiskWarrior CD or the Internal drive ?

Obviously if it was the Hard Drive then we have an answer.

Is it up todate via the software control panel ?

Could be the logic board, but if it starts up with the System DVD disk then I would suspect something else.

I'll have a further think...

regards

Ric
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2005
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Hi Ric!

Yes, the version of DiskWarrior is the latest. This problem came up right before I left for the day yesterday. I tried several times to startup from DiskWarrior today and it fails each time but differently than before. This time is gets to the DiskWarrior splash screen (take quite a while to get there) and then the system reboots itself.

I reran the Apple Hardware test (extended option) and everything came up okay.
I just tried running First Aid from Disk Utility and tried repairing the disk, it came up with an HFS error which it fixed.

It is working okay now, but I am still a little concerned due to the frequency of boot problems and that fact that today when trying to run DiskWarrior it just kept restarting.
 

Ric

Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
4,245
Reaction score
5
Hi there,

just for the sake of argument does the Diskwarrior cd boot the other Macs successfully ?

Sounds like you'll just have to keep an eye on it, and if it keeps happening get Apple to have a look at it.

regards

Ric
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2005
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Yes, the others boot just fine from the DiskWarrior disk.

This afternoon, problems returned, so I'm going to post everything in the hopes that maybe it will help someone else along the line.

I wanted to restart the lab via ARD and saw that it was offline, I walked back and it was off (I don't know if it shut down on its own or if a student turned it off, I tend to believe it shut itself down because most of them don't know how to shut down) so I tried to turn it on and this time I had no picture at all, the screen didn't even start up but the fans were running heavily.

I called Apple and in needing to get to the serial number underneath, I unplugged it, when I plugged it back in it worked fine. They had me reset the PRAM and Firmware in hoping that it may help and not require service (this really reduced the startup time). The tech felt that it could be a hard drive, logic board, or power supply problem.

So for now, I am going to watch it closely and if anything happens again in the near future I will take it in for service.

Thanks for all your help, this is a great resource! :D
 

Ric

Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
4,245
Reaction score
5
Glad it's sort of working...

..you'll have to let us know how you get on !

regards

Ric
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top