iMac sporadic booting...

[M3G4]

Hey all,

You all seem quite knowledgeable so I was wondering if you could help with my Mac issues... I'm getting incredibly frustrated

Had my Intel iMac 20" for a couple of weeks now, and have noticed a few recurring problems.

The first one is if I shut down the iMac and then go to turn it on again after a while, it takes a concerning amount of time to even show the apple logo, getting stuck at the grey screen beforehand. I can usually get around this by turning the machine off and starting it again, and I've noticed if I unplug all my USB devices it seems to boot normally.

Second problem is after leaving bootcamp to boot back into OSX, the iMac doesn't boot at all. I get a blank screen, and the light on the front stays lit. I left the machine for 15 mins, nothing happenned. I rebooted around 3-4 times before I got any life - and I'd also pulled out the USB devices.

Hooked to the Belkin USB hub, I have my iPod and 2 USB printers. Hooked directly to my mac, I have 2 external USB hard drives - one is a Maxtor NTFS 300GB Drive, the other a HFS+ 120GB Icybox.

Any idea why this thing boots sporadically? This is nowhere near good enough for a machine that cost me over £1,000.

 

[tombarnes]

I've a feeling this may all be down to bootcamp. The important thing to remember here (an apple write it into the license when you install bootcamp (the bit which no-one really reads)) bootcamp is a beta; Expect booting gliches.

When the final version is out, it should all be fine! Not everyone will experience the same problem when using bootcamp. There are several issues and several combinations - you have slow boot times and a usb issue. I had a very small and insignificant issue with my imac displaying a folder with a question mark on it for a split second when i booted.

But remember bootcamp is a beta. Uninstall it and I reckon your imac would work perfect. Then try re-installing and see if it reoccurs.

You should expect this with any computer, regardless of price WHEN USING BETA SOFTWARE.

Cheers,

Tom

 

[M3G4]

I've a feeling this may all be down to bootcamp. The important thing to remember here (an apple write it into the license when you install bootcamp (the bit which no-one really reads)) bootcamp is a beta; Expect booting gliches.

When the final version is out, it should all be fine! Not everyone will experience the same problem when using bootcamp. There are several issues and several combinations - you have slow boot times and a usb issue. I had a very small and insignificant issue with my imac displaying a folder with a question mark on it for a split second when i booted.

But remember bootcamp is a beta. Uninstall it and I reckon your imac would work perfect. Then try re-installing and see if it reoccurs.

You should expect this with any computer, regardless of price WHEN USING BETA SOFTWARE.

Cheers,

Tom

I forgot to mention - this was happenning before Bootcamp was installed, the only difference is with bootcamp I get the black screen.

 

[tombarnes]

I forgot to mention - this was happenning before Bootcamp was installed, the only difference is with bootcamp I get the black screen.

Well then, I'm stumped!

 

[M3G4]

Well then, I'm stumped!

Me too, all I can think of is the mac is trying to boot from the USB drives, but I have no clue how to stop it from happenning! I've done the command-option-p-r thing, didn't work, tried disk permissions, putting the padlock on in system preferences on the mac partition... nothing. It will boot fine, within 10-15 seconds as long as the USB drives are unplugged.

Is it worth getting a single large firewire drive from the apple website on the strength of this?

 

[M3G4]

Just tried to recreate this on my Macbook - it doesn't happen on the macbook!

 

[M3G4]

So far I've established it the external HDD's - anyone else have this problem? Got a fix?