G5 Died ...

[borjam]

Originally Posted by TLMUSIC

My G5 power mac suddenly stopped working :( it's only about 4 months old. I tried opening logic and no applications would open, so i restarted the computer and now it wont load past the white screen with the apple icon (the one just before log in) this sucks so bad coz i have work to do ... anyone know what this could be - hope it's nothing major!

Thanks for any help ...

Was the operating system alive and you just couldn't launch applications? And after that it wasn't able to restart?

I bet it's the hard disk. Once upon a time I had a Unix system with a completely broken hard disk working for three weeks. It was my gateway to the Internet, and as all the software was already in memory, it continued happily routing my traffic although I couldn't login to the system

[TLMUSIC]

Yea the o/s was working, it was running fine, but no applications would open. So i restarted it and now it wont load past the white apple icon screen - guess i.m gonna have to send it off

[max cooper]

Are you gonna send off the computer or the drive?

How about replacing the system drive and reinstalling the O.S.?

[Sirocco]

i think i saw the mac vs pc ad for this one..

before the ad finished the mac fainted and the pc said "i can do that too" and followed...

[TLMUSIC]

Originally Posted by max cooper

Are you gonna send off the computer or the drive?

How about replacing the system drive and reinstalling the O.S.?

Cool, thanks for the advice, sorry i'm new to computers, and especially macs, so how do i accomplish this exactly?

Many thanks

[xist]

It sounds like you would need a computer tech guy with you, it could even be an easy thing to fix (COULD) but if you're not so experienced you could not be able to do anything good. Where are you located?

[Reptil]

First I think it is a corrupt system folder.
A corrupt disk means you'll get a question mark. It won't be able to see a valid OS at all. Yours does, but starting up may be compromised, because of corruption of the OS. If it is a bad disk and you didn't backup, well, then....
Also it can be a Kernel Panic, but I don't think so, because that shows a different screen.
It happens; you can find information here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106227
Scared the living shit out of me, first time it happened. It is easy to fix.
Could be RAM gone bad. It happens too. (things get hot) Run the hardware test DVD. Sometimes that doesn't help. Harware test is not perfect BTW. And is frustratingly slowwwwww.

Here's what you do first:
Startup the machine from the installation DVD that came with the machine. Hold "C" during startup.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459
Check if the OS sees the disk.
If it doesn't even start up from the DVD then something is very wrong. And it needs to go back.
OK, it starts up. sees the disk, but cannot read it.
Do not initialise this disk rightaway. It will overwrite your files.
Run Diskwarrior to repair the disk. http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/
If Diskwarrior doesn't fix it, something is wrong with the disk, and you need to get it back to the shop.
Ok, it sees the disk, can read it, but starting up from that disk isn't possible.
Do not initialise the disk, but overwrite the System Files, by installing a new System on top of it. Check the options when installing, this is important. Do not "clean install" before you tried the other options. Run Diskwarrior and Disk Utillity one more time anyway.

Alternative: Start up from a different disk, and run Diskwarrior Memtest Disk Utillity etc. from there. It is generally a good idea to have a second OS sit on another disk. It saved my ass a couple of times.
Good luck