Howdy all,
I was recently given an early-2008 iMac (specifically, this one) of the 3.06GHz variety.
I was told that the machine had a dead hard drive, so upon receiving the machine, I disassembled it entirely, replaced the thermal paste on the GPU and CPU, then put it back together with a new 120GB SSD, as I intend to not sell this machine and keep it for a while.
After getting it fully rebuilt, I created a bootable USB of Mac OS X El Capitan (the latest that this machine supports) and I also grabbed my OS X Lion DVD to install that alongside El Capitan for other software. (I personally prefer Lion's software to newer MacOS)
However, this is where the trouble began. I tried booting from the El Capitan installer first, because I intended to install that as the primary OS, and possibly install Lion later if the desire/need arose. The system detected the El Capitan USB, and I was able to use the mouse or keyboard to navigate over to the USB drive and boot from it. The system appeared to begin booting with no problem via the USB drive. The light on the drive was indicating activity, and the system appeared to be booting. (progress bar w/Apple logo appeared, and was moving). About 60 seconds into the boot, however, the light indicating read/write activity on the USB drive stopped flashing, and the system's progress bar froze entirely. Shortly after this occurred, I heard the speakers say "To use English as the primary language, press return." This led me to believe that the machine was booting(?) properly, yet there was nothing showing on the screen other than the frozen Apple logo/progress bar.
I have tried PRAM/NVRAM reset, no luck. I also tried booting with another set of RAM sticks, again no dice, although the progress bar did move a bit further this time. I also tried booting the machine from the Lion DVD, but again no luck.
TIA everyone, sorry for the ramble
[automerge]1571838946[/automerge]
Update: booted it into verbose mode from the USB installer. This is what it got stuck at:
I was recently given an early-2008 iMac (specifically, this one) of the 3.06GHz variety.
I was told that the machine had a dead hard drive, so upon receiving the machine, I disassembled it entirely, replaced the thermal paste on the GPU and CPU, then put it back together with a new 120GB SSD, as I intend to not sell this machine and keep it for a while.
After getting it fully rebuilt, I created a bootable USB of Mac OS X El Capitan (the latest that this machine supports) and I also grabbed my OS X Lion DVD to install that alongside El Capitan for other software. (I personally prefer Lion's software to newer MacOS)
However, this is where the trouble began. I tried booting from the El Capitan installer first, because I intended to install that as the primary OS, and possibly install Lion later if the desire/need arose. The system detected the El Capitan USB, and I was able to use the mouse or keyboard to navigate over to the USB drive and boot from it. The system appeared to begin booting with no problem via the USB drive. The light on the drive was indicating activity, and the system appeared to be booting. (progress bar w/Apple logo appeared, and was moving). About 60 seconds into the boot, however, the light indicating read/write activity on the USB drive stopped flashing, and the system's progress bar froze entirely. Shortly after this occurred, I heard the speakers say "To use English as the primary language, press return." This led me to believe that the machine was booting(?) properly, yet there was nothing showing on the screen other than the frozen Apple logo/progress bar.
I have tried PRAM/NVRAM reset, no luck. I also tried booting with another set of RAM sticks, again no dice, although the progress bar did move a bit further this time. I also tried booting the machine from the Lion DVD, but again no luck.
TIA everyone, sorry for the ramble
[automerge]1571838946[/automerge]
Update: booted it into verbose mode from the USB installer. This is what it got stuck at: