HELP, G5 iMac is totally not working! Tried all i know :(

You guys are my last hope of solving this, when i got my mac i wasnt told that you had to buy the apple care policy within 90 days or your out in the cold!

A few weeks back I had a problem with "word" freezing the entire imac, switching it off & restaring it solved the problem & good ol mac bought the file back up from where i left it

Over the weekend my mac suddenly wouldnt boot at all. Each time i reset it, it would get one step colser to working; eg black screen- restart. grey screen, restart, grey screen with apple logo- restart. Apple logo with spinning wheel- restart. Blue screen- restart. Blue screen with password- Booted! Hooray!

This stopped to work the very next day, thankfully I had backed up my important files expecting the worst.

Read the manual. Held down down option, apple, P & R, heard the 2nd chime- nothing!

restarted & put tiger disk back in, failed to boot- restarted & help down option & went to purple screen with tiger dvd & hard drive as options. Tried to boot from hard drive & failed. Restart & selected to boot from disku . At this satge I was so angry I just thought a fresh start was the best thing & totally formatted & reinstalled Tiger! All went well & i got another 24 hours of usage.

Booted tonight now nothing is working, i cant even bring the purple screen up to select where to boot from. I tried over & over. I can hold option, apple, P & R but it goes nowhere, same goes for just holding option!

What the hell is going on??????

Worst thing is that I have had to admit defeat & I write this post from a windows PC!!!!!

Please help, I'm totally lost here & its my 1st Mac since switching!!

Regards

You should try the standard troubleshooting suggestions:
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/ (see the "My Mac needs help" section)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2004011205473937
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/faqs.html

In particular, be sure to do "Repair Disk" (different from "Repair Disk Permissions"!) in Disk Utility when booted from the Install CD/DVD. I.e. you restart from the Install CD/DVD, then run the version of Disk Utility that is available from one of the menus there.
See this Apple doc:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

...when i got my mac i wasnt told that you had to buy the apple care policy within 90 days or your out in the cold!
I was told at the Apple store when I bought my PowerBook G4 that I could get Apple Care anytime as long as it wsa within my original 1st year of warrenty.
I also know someone who purchased an iPod and had issues at the 9 month stage and the same Apple Store told him he could get Apple Care on it to help cover shipping charge that were not covered in the original warrenty.
Read under Coverage Information in this pdf (http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/AppleCareProtPlanFacts.pdf).

Also you should have 1 year of service coverage and 90 day telephone support

As tbsingleton73 said, you can buy Applecare anytime within the first year after purchase.

Booted tonight now nothing is working, i cant even bring the purple screen up to select where to boot from. I tried over & over. I can hold option, apple, P & R but it goes nowhere, same goes for just holding option!

What keyboard are you using? Is it Apple brand? Is it wired? If it's wireless, or a non-Apple brand, switch it out for an Apple wired keyboard.

By the way, it sometimes matters which command key (that's the one that has the Apple logo on it) and which option key you hold down. Correct procedure is to use the command and option keys on the left side of the keyboard. Usually it doesn't matter, but it's slightly possible that it does in your case.

Trevor

:mad: :mad:

I have the same problem. Got this iMac last November. It worked fine until recently. First trouble started after some updating, about one month ago.
It is now all UPDATED till 2 days ago. (currently OS 10.4.5)

For some UNKNOWN reasons the Movie Trailers is always getting "The server doesn't work" (or something like that! :mad: ). Well, that was a minor problem, I understand many people have that same problem. So, why Apple don't say a word about it? Like, "we know, we are fixing it ASAP"

Today, bingo: BLUE SCREEN ...really out of the blue :mad: :mad:

I checked every possible remedy. I read all troubleshooting I could find. Tried everything. NO WAY. WHY ?
Please note I'm NOT a beginner! I started with the original disk, used DISK UTILITY, Verified/repaired Permissions, Verified/repaired HD (it was all OK)

So... what to do next? Anybody knows for sure? Please no guessing. Apple, please, if you are reading this, say something. Thanks.

Have you tried wiping out the disk clean and doing an erase and install? That is one of the best ways to rule out software as an issue.

If it is hardware take it to your AASP so they can repair it.

As for apple care, I used to work for an AASP and now for a self maintainer and I can tell you right now, you need at least 1 day of the original warranty to purchase apple care.

Also see this Apple doc on startup problems:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106464

I have just connected successfully an external HD with OS 10.4.5 and it works fine with it. Sure I could wipe clean the internal HD and reinstall. But that is not my point. What I would really like to know is WHY THIS IS HAPPENING? The iMAC is almost brand new, there no other apps installed except EUDORA and some hundreds emails. In the past months I almost never used it. So what could be possibly wrong? I do not believe it is the hardware otherwise it would not have worked with the external HD. Right?
Thanks for your help.

I have just connected successfully an external HD with OS 10.4.5 and it works fine with it. Sure I could wipe clean the internal HD and reinstall. But that is not my point. What I would really like to know is WHY THIS IS HAPPENING? The iMAC is almost brand new, there no other apps installed except EUDORA and some hundreds emails. In the past months I almost never used it. So what could be possibly wrong? I do not believe it is the hardware otherwise it would not have worked with the external HD. Right?
Thanks for your help.

Every single time you use the computer you run risk of corrupting data, having the file system crash, or hardware failure. It could have been a million different things that went wrong. I tell all my users that if they didn't break I wouldn't have a job.

Trying to figure out why it went wrong may take forever, or it may never happen.

One of the OS updates could have corrupted something small that had a domino effect that is now the root of all your problems.

If you have a copy of diskwarrior it will try to rebuild the crashed volume and it will generate a report of what it found wrong with it.

Also see this Apple doc on startup problems:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106464

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately it seems that they cover up to OS 10.3.9

"Note: This article applies to Mac OS X 10.3.9 or earlier. "

elsewhere they also mention "OS 9 Folder". I DID NOT install it! I only have installed/updated up to 10.4.5 and everything else till 2 days ago.

So... how may I proceed, short of wiping the HD clean and start all over?
Thanks so much in advance.

As tbsingleton73 said, you can buy Applecare anytime within the first year after purchase.

Um, slightly off topic, but does this apply to ipods?

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately it seems that they cover up to OS 10.3.9

"Note: This article applies to Mac OS X 10.3.9 or earlier. "

I glanced through their advice and everything I saw still pertains to Tiger. There may be some minor change somewhere in that advice to account for Tiger, but I find it unlikely.

elsewhere they also mention "OS 9 Folder". I DID NOT install it! I only have installed/updated up to 10.4.5 and everything else till 2 days ago.


No problem! That just means that you can't try those items advising you to try to boot to OS 9, since you don't have it installed. OS 9 has always been an optional install with OS X.

Trevor

I wish to share with you all this crazy afternoon experience.

Restarted with Command-shift and found 3 start-up apps. The only "foreign" one was a little app to use a VOIP Phone, quite good, made by VOIPVOICE (a Canadian Company). It worked well so far, but evidently, at some point, it caused a conflict with the 10.4.5 Perhaps, the copy I had installed was only meant to be used with previous MAC OS X. I'll check with them ASAP to see whether they made a new one.

Anyway, once removed, it all worked well again. :-)

Thanks to you all. Best regards.