Help!
(apologies if this post is overly long, but I am desperate to get this straightened out!)
I am a semi-Mac-newbie (I was converted in July 2004) with a sick rev.A? dual 1.8 G5 (8 ram slots, PCI-x) I have been running 10.4.7 for a month, and until recently I had 3.5GB of RAM installed. It has worked mostly great and fast for the last two years (with a few exceptions detailed below). It has the stock video card, stock 160GB HDD and an additional Hitachi 250GB internal SATA drive. I use the stock keyboard and mouse connected via USB.
The problem:
http://static.flickr.com/60/198664471_f50368cfc1.jpg
My G5 is currently not starting up - it hangs forever on the gray screen with the Apple logo and the spinning wheel 'thingie'. Shortly after pressing the power button I hear the startup sound. The hard drive makes 'healthy' "thinking" sounds. It sounds like it is loading things and starting up properly. But instead of the customary quick pop into the blue startup screen and on to my desktop, the gray screen stays on, and the spinning wheel spins round and round. It will run like that for hours with the fans blowing ever louder before I lose patience and hold down the power button to turn it off.
Earlier this evening I was in Safari, with a few windows open, some with multiple tabs open. When I tried to cmd-Q to quit Safari entirely, everything locked up, and white-on-black DOS-like text appeared in overlay on the upper left side of the monitor with references to scripts and panics and things. I panicked myself and didn't read much of it. It looked scary. Mistakenly, I also neglected to take a picture of this mysterious text before forcing the computer to power off by holding down power button.
The computer has hung on the gray screen before happened before, seemingly randomly over the past year, but I have never had text/system/info appear like that. Usually after a few tries (2-8 boots) getting stuck on the gray screen, or resetting the PRAM it would load up fine and work great for weeks to months at a time with heavy daily usage and no real problems. I would repair permissions and do a backup, and then things would run smoothly through sleep-wake and poweroff cycles for some time. But this is the first time I have ever had the text appear.
This seems to have happened more frequently in the past six months, but I can't be sure. I remember that the past few times this has happened I was working in Safari with multiple windows open with multiple tabs. Suddenly the computer would freeze, and I wasn't able to force quit. I would have to turn the machine off by holding down the power button. After waiting a minute, and trying to restart I would run into this "gray screen of death" problem. But up until now it would eventually start.
What I have tried:
I have tried resetting the SMU by removing the power cord for 15+ seconds.
I have tried resetting the PRAM (cmd+optn+p+r).
I have tried unplugging all of the peripherals. I have tried all of this multiple times. Still no luck.
I have tried removing all of the RAM, and changing the order. I have tried removing RAM and running with each pair of RAM individually. No change.
I have also tried running hardware test from my G5 setup/install disk. I got this creepy error, the hardware test froze completely, everything froze, and I had to power off. --- The text in the upper left is similar to what I got while trying to quit Safari earlier this evening. I can't recall if it is actually the same message, but it's appearance is similar.
Here's a pic:
http://static.flickr.com/67/198664470_6a963598f2_b.jpg
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjoshea/198664470/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/67/198664470_6a963598f2_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="G5 Mystery Headaches" /></a>
More case history:
I don't have Applecare. The 1 year original warranty on this computer expired last summer. Sniff...Sniff...Sniff...Cry...Cry...
I bought some ram (2X1GB) from OWC 3-4 months ago. It installed and was recognized fine and things seemed to be ok.
I installed 2X512mb Kingston sticks about a year and a half ago, and ran into my first serious problem with the machine (besides bleeping/noise issues) --- When initially installing the Kingston RAM (bought from Fry's), and stupidly simultaneously updating the computer (10.3.? - 10.3.?) the G5 kernal panicked during the reboot of the update and I was forced to run an archive and install. I returned the RAM and got another batch and while installing that the right-hand RAM slot ejector broke. I installed the replacement Kingston RAM anyways and it seemed to work fine (the computer recognized it properly). That was my first problem with the computer. Perhaps all of my problems stem from this incident?
I tried running Memtest a few weeks ago and got conflicting info - from at least one pass - RAM was passing in terminal and failing in OSX. Or was it the other way round? I lost patience with the long process of running this and never fully finished all of the tests and all the swap cycles. I wish I could pull up the logs and put them here if they would help.
I have an external firewire drive with a superduper clone-backup of the main 160GB drive (the last backup I ran was 1 1/2 weeks ago).
I installed LittleSnitch at the beginning of June. Perhaps LittleSnitch went berserk?
I have installed various other programs over the life of the computer. Adobe CS then CS2, various PS plugins. A Costco photocenter plugin last week. latest Ecto. Speed Download. iLife '05. pzizz. Microsoft Office 2004. Final Cut Express 2. Toast w/ Jam. Wallet. latest Firefox. A mess of other miscellany...
What's going on with my G5? Can I fix this myself (I am on a tight budget)?
Help me get off this horrible aged Dell Pentium III laptop and back onto my beloved G5!
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or kind thoughts/prayers/incantations for my sick G5. Any help would be enormously appreciated.
- Brian
(apologies if this post is overly long, but I am desperate to get this straightened out!)
I am a semi-Mac-newbie (I was converted in July 2004) with a sick rev.A? dual 1.8 G5 (8 ram slots, PCI-x) I have been running 10.4.7 for a month, and until recently I had 3.5GB of RAM installed. It has worked mostly great and fast for the last two years (with a few exceptions detailed below). It has the stock video card, stock 160GB HDD and an additional Hitachi 250GB internal SATA drive. I use the stock keyboard and mouse connected via USB.
The problem:
http://static.flickr.com/60/198664471_f50368cfc1.jpg
My G5 is currently not starting up - it hangs forever on the gray screen with the Apple logo and the spinning wheel 'thingie'. Shortly after pressing the power button I hear the startup sound. The hard drive makes 'healthy' "thinking" sounds. It sounds like it is loading things and starting up properly. But instead of the customary quick pop into the blue startup screen and on to my desktop, the gray screen stays on, and the spinning wheel spins round and round. It will run like that for hours with the fans blowing ever louder before I lose patience and hold down the power button to turn it off.
Earlier this evening I was in Safari, with a few windows open, some with multiple tabs open. When I tried to cmd-Q to quit Safari entirely, everything locked up, and white-on-black DOS-like text appeared in overlay on the upper left side of the monitor with references to scripts and panics and things. I panicked myself and didn't read much of it. It looked scary. Mistakenly, I also neglected to take a picture of this mysterious text before forcing the computer to power off by holding down power button.
The computer has hung on the gray screen before happened before, seemingly randomly over the past year, but I have never had text/system/info appear like that. Usually after a few tries (2-8 boots) getting stuck on the gray screen, or resetting the PRAM it would load up fine and work great for weeks to months at a time with heavy daily usage and no real problems. I would repair permissions and do a backup, and then things would run smoothly through sleep-wake and poweroff cycles for some time. But this is the first time I have ever had the text appear.
This seems to have happened more frequently in the past six months, but I can't be sure. I remember that the past few times this has happened I was working in Safari with multiple windows open with multiple tabs. Suddenly the computer would freeze, and I wasn't able to force quit. I would have to turn the machine off by holding down the power button. After waiting a minute, and trying to restart I would run into this "gray screen of death" problem. But up until now it would eventually start.
What I have tried:
I have tried resetting the SMU by removing the power cord for 15+ seconds.
I have tried resetting the PRAM (cmd+optn+p+r).
I have tried unplugging all of the peripherals. I have tried all of this multiple times. Still no luck.
I have tried removing all of the RAM, and changing the order. I have tried removing RAM and running with each pair of RAM individually. No change.
I have also tried running hardware test from my G5 setup/install disk. I got this creepy error, the hardware test froze completely, everything froze, and I had to power off. --- The text in the upper left is similar to what I got while trying to quit Safari earlier this evening. I can't recall if it is actually the same message, but it's appearance is similar.
Here's a pic:
http://static.flickr.com/67/198664470_6a963598f2_b.jpg
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjoshea/198664470/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/67/198664470_6a963598f2_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="G5 Mystery Headaches" /></a>
More case history:
I don't have Applecare. The 1 year original warranty on this computer expired last summer. Sniff...Sniff...Sniff...Cry...Cry...
I bought some ram (2X1GB) from OWC 3-4 months ago. It installed and was recognized fine and things seemed to be ok.
I installed 2X512mb Kingston sticks about a year and a half ago, and ran into my first serious problem with the machine (besides bleeping/noise issues) --- When initially installing the Kingston RAM (bought from Fry's), and stupidly simultaneously updating the computer (10.3.? - 10.3.?) the G5 kernal panicked during the reboot of the update and I was forced to run an archive and install. I returned the RAM and got another batch and while installing that the right-hand RAM slot ejector broke. I installed the replacement Kingston RAM anyways and it seemed to work fine (the computer recognized it properly). That was my first problem with the computer. Perhaps all of my problems stem from this incident?
I tried running Memtest a few weeks ago and got conflicting info - from at least one pass - RAM was passing in terminal and failing in OSX. Or was it the other way round? I lost patience with the long process of running this and never fully finished all of the tests and all the swap cycles. I wish I could pull up the logs and put them here if they would help.
I have an external firewire drive with a superduper clone-backup of the main 160GB drive (the last backup I ran was 1 1/2 weeks ago).
I installed LittleSnitch at the beginning of June. Perhaps LittleSnitch went berserk?
I have installed various other programs over the life of the computer. Adobe CS then CS2, various PS plugins. A Costco photocenter plugin last week. latest Ecto. Speed Download. iLife '05. pzizz. Microsoft Office 2004. Final Cut Express 2. Toast w/ Jam. Wallet. latest Firefox. A mess of other miscellany...
What's going on with my G5? Can I fix this myself (I am on a tight budget)?
Help me get off this horrible aged Dell Pentium III laptop and back onto my beloved G5!
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or kind thoughts/prayers/incantations for my sick G5. Any help would be enormously appreciated.
- Brian
