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Major Issues with my G5 iMac

M

motherduce

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 3, 2005
262
0
Houston, TX
Well here goes - I searched the forums and found a few similar articles, but many from 2003 or 2004. I'm in a bind and need some help.

My G5 iMac (w/o iSight) is suddenly acting up. I haven't had a problem with this thing at all, but now I'm experiencing the following:

  1. It doesn't wake up from deep sleep. No matter what I do, I have to do a hard shutdown and restart. I've tried plugging in USB keyboard instead of bluetooth, still no help.
  2. It does not recognize my external firewire HD or DVD-Drives anymore.
  3. Safari and iTunes have had a lot of errors and I've had to force quit a lot recently.

Now, I don't mind reformatting the drive and reinstalling OSX, but I can't access my external HD or my DVD-Burner to make a backup of my iTunes, photos, movies, etc. and I can't spend a week backing up to CDs.

Any ideas?
 
How much free hard drive space do you have? Make sure there's at least 8GB, preferably more. I'd try resetting the SMU first. Then I'd make a new user account and see if the problems carry across. If you're still not having a trouble-free Mac experience, then I'd think about an Archive & Install before doing a full reformat and install. This way you shouldn't technically lose any data. :)
 
mad jew said:
How much free hard drive space do you have? Make sure there's at least 8GB, preferably more. I'd try resetting the SMU first. Then I'd make a new user account and see if the problems carry across. If you're still not having a trouble-free Mac experience, then I'd think about an Archive & Install before doing a full reformat and install. This way you shouldn't technically lose any data. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips - I have plenty of HD space left, around 60-80GB, so that's not the problem. I'll try the SMU reset tonight.
 
Well, I reset the SMU a couple times, zapped the PRAM, repaired permissions, etc...

However, I still have major problems. I just turned off sleeping, since I can never wake my iMac from sleep. Before it had problems staying asleep, but I guess that was because I had a bunch of external accessories plugged in via USB.

I really need to keep all my external devices connected, but it seems like that may be a problem - which seems ridiculous to me. Currently I have a Kensington 7-port USB 2.0 hub with a HP Printer, Memory Card reader, Griffin PowerMate, iPod, Logitech Wireless Mouse...

I'm still getting a lot of SBBOD's with just a few apps open. I know Safari gets these a lot, but it seems really ridiculous with my system specs.

My FW drives come and go. Sometimes they show up, other times they don't. When I reset the SMU, leave it unplugged for a while, then plug them in, they've worked, but seems like after one or two off/on cycles with those drives, they stop working again.

So my main issues are:
1. Can't wake from sleep
2. FW drives stop working
3. System a bit sluggish (SBBOD)

Help! I'm starting to get discouraged, because normally I can troubleshoot most tech problems, and this is supposed to be easy with a Mac!
 
I know you need all your peripherals, but I'd still try unplugging them one-by-one to see if one of them is causing this grief. :)

Oh, and you probably already know this, but never reset the SMU more than once between restarts.
 
ingenious said:
Sounds like my problems... except mine (I think it's the same revision, just 20") won't sleep on schedule.

Thread.
Click to expand...

Interesting.

So when you zap the PRAM, you're supposed to let it chime more than twice?

While I understand it may be a peripheral, but if I have to remove it to use my Mac properly, that's ridiculous.

As of now, my iMac won't go to sleep at all. I've tried it from the menu, keyboard, and letting it sit - nothing let's it go to sleep.

I'm starting to have doubts about getting a Macbook now, since I'm having these problems with my iMac.
 
Okay, so I just unplugged everything except my wireless mouse USB drive, and I was able to put it to sleep, and bring it back.

I did have my firewire HD and DVD-Burner plugged in, but they were turned off. If I have to keep these unplugged for my Mac to work, I'm going to be pissed.
 
If you narrow down which peripheral is keeping your Mac up, you might be able to find a firmware update or something similar to resolve the issue. :)
 
ingenious said:
Well, that doesn't affect me, but what about the original poster... since this is his thread after all. :D

I'm going to try resetting the NVRAM.
Click to expand...

No, I don't fall into that series. I was out of town, will be testing each peripheral this week. Will keep you posted. So much for "It just works."
 
What i don't get is why everyone gets soooo pissed off at little snafu's in day to day computer life.

Don't get angry at it just work with it and try to see what was causing it.

For example, the last couple months i wasn't able to play games on it for longer than 5-10 minutes. So i removed PCI USB card thinking that was it, removed peripherals, removed wacom tablet. Repaired permissions, created a new user account.

Then i remembered i had ATIcellerator on my computer and i turned that off and bam games played perfectly. Obviously i had it running too hot for the card so i dubbed it down a bit and now it is back to normal.

Only took me about a month to figure out what was the problem.

Why get so pissed off at these things.

Obviously it is one of your peripherals that is causing the havoc so just testing them one by one without get pissed off will do a lot better for your stress levels
 
eva01 said:
What i don't get is why everyone gets soooo pissed off at little snafu's in day to day computer life.

Don't get angry at it just work with it and try to see what was causing it.
Click to expand...

The thing is, some of us bought expensive computers that we thought would just work. A computer that new (or as new as mine) should have no problems!

BTW, my sleep problems (related to sleeping on schedule) were resolved after one reset of my SMU. That broke the function to put it to sleep by pressing the power button, so reset it again, and now everything works perfectly.
 
motherduce said:
Interesting.

So when you zap the PRAM, you're supposed to let it chime more than twice?

While I understand it may be a peripheral, but if I have to remove it to use my Mac properly, that's ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Yes, the Apple site says to let it chime four times, then actually turn it on.

Also, I 100% agree that these problems are ridiculous. We didn't spend almost US$2000 on these computers to have to deal with stupid sleep problems!
 
Well, now I have more issues with my G5 iMac.

I had to replace the HD after my other one died on me. Reinstalled OS X, been using it about a week. Haven't added much else in the form of apps.

So here's my problem now. Even running just Safari and iTunes, Safari is horridly slow, I mean beachballs everywhere - almost nonstop. It's terribly annoying, so much so that I switched over to my Windows XP box to order my Macbook - how's that for irony!

I've about had it with this iMac. It was a refurb, and it worked beautifully for a few months, then it slowed a bit, and had some issues with peripherals. Then the big HD crash. Now, even after reinstall, I have issues with my external HD and DVD-Writer.

And I won't even get into the fact that it won't sync with my bluetooth headset (the Motorola H700).

Don't get me wrong, I love OS X and Apple, I'm just disappointed in my iMac. Turns out a $900 investment may end up being my 6-year old son's computer, because of all the slowdowns and annoyances...

Any tips?
 
motherduce said:
Well, now I have more issues with my G5 iMac.

I had to replace the HD after my other one died on me. Reinstalled OS X, been using it about a week. Haven't added much else in the form of apps.

So here's my problem now. Even running just Safari and iTunes, Safari is horridly slow, I mean beachballs everywhere - almost nonstop. It's terribly annoying, so much so that I switched over to my Windows XP box to order my Macbook - how's that for irony!

I've about had it with this iMac. It was a refurb, and it worked beautifully for a few months, then it slowed a bit, and had some issues with peripherals. Then the big HD crash. Now, even after reinstall, I have issues with my external HD and DVD-Writer.

And I won't even get into the fact that it won't sync with my bluetooth headset (the Motorola H700).

Don't get me wrong, I love OS X and Apple, I'm just disappointed in my iMac. Turns out a $900 investment may end up being my 6-year old son's computer, because of all the slowdowns and annoyances...

Any tips?
Click to expand...

It was a refurb? You could have received a defective iMac. You're more likely to when you go down the "cheap-o" route (not calling you cheap - $900 is still a lot of money). You've done pretty much everything you can. I suggest taking it to the "Genius" Bar at your local Apple Store.
 
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