I woke up this morning to the sound of my G5 trying to take off. The fans were running at speeds beyond comprehension, emitting sounds loud enough to wake me up from the next room (and I am a pretty heavy sleeper). Both of my displays were showing blank screens that had bluish grey lines going across them. This leads me to believe it crashed at some point in the night, but I have never seen this happen before so I am not sure. Have any of you experienced this with your macs? Any ideas what it might be, and if it may have damaged my processors?

Mine does the same thing when I put it in sleep mode. I hate it! After spending that much $ the G5 should'nt have stupid problems like that.

A few of the G5's in our school's Arts computer lab do that, but they're first rev 1.6ghz G5's. I'm not saying that excuses the problem, but since yours is a later rev, you can usually expect it to be less prone to problems. How long have you had this computer? Is it still under warranty? I would say that if it's still working fine otherwise once you restarted it, then just wait and see if it happens again. If it doesn't, then you're in the clear. If it does, than hopefully you have a warranty/AppleCare to take advantage of. Worst case scenario, it could be a logic board problem, which is not a big deal if it's covered still but crazy expensive if it's not.

I'd suggest poking around the Apple support discussion board on their site. I kinda recall there being an issue with some dual 2.0 G5's. I believe there is a firmware update too for some models to address fan noise.

I had a similar issue with my daul 1.8 that required a full logic board replacement.
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my dual 2.0 is so quiet I barely know its on

The fan speed is controlled by software, which looks at temperatures around the machine and adjusts the fans as appropriate. When you get a kernel panic, the software isn't there to pay attention to the temperature sensors. So the hardware has a failsafe mechanism, which cranks the fan speed up when the software stops talking to it in order to ensure that the thing doesn't melt.

The real issue is the kernel panic; the fans are secondary.

I used to get kernel panics if I left Logic running overnight (probably a bug in the MOTU driver, since it's more-or-less impossible for an application to cause a kernel panic directly without a bug down in the bowels somewhere.) I stopped leaving Logic running when I walked away, and the thing hasn't crashed in months.

My Dual 2.7 G5 does the same thing.
Worst of all I’d have to wait couple of hours before restarting… otherwise it won’t even reboot.
Plus my machine is so loud and the fan is almost always on even when I’m freezing in the Control Room.
I talked to Apple but unfortunately I don’t have AppleCare and they can’t do anything.
They told me to take it back to Fry’s (where I bought it from).
I do have Fry’s 2 year extended warranty… hopefully it will all be taken care of.

Thank you all for the information, I figured it was some sort of kernel panic... I do have apple care so I guess I'll look into getting it fixed.
Thanks again!

Grrr. this is the second time I'll have to send a computer back. My first G5 was DOA.

If I do end up sending my computer back would you recommend taking out the hard drives to make sure all my work is safe? I am running two internal drives and my external doesn't have enough room to back them both up...

A101 -

That behavior sounds like what I got when the logicboard on my G5 2x2 went out. Fans blew continually and Apple had to replace the logicboard completely......I was under warranty or that would have been expensive. If you are still under warranty I would get that puppy repaired pronto!

Stephen

It may be a software issue, in which case sending it back won't buy you anything. But it's probably worth ruling out hardware as an issue (you may wish to try running the diagnostics on the DVD that shipped with the machine.)

But the first thing you should do is buy enough hard drive space to back everything up. If you can't afford to lose it by sending it into the shop, you can't afford to lose it by having the drive crap out.

Thanks Stephen,

Ohhh! This computer is loaded with files… audio, video, pictures etc...
What is the best way to backup?…
Should I do it each file manually one at a time?
Any tips would be appreciated?

I'll get right on it. I do have all of my music backed up but not my videos which is the majority of my HD space. Do you find that buying an internal drive and an enclosure is just as reliable as purchasing an external drive already assembled?

Get Retrospect -- I use it all the time and it has served me well

That's what I always do. I get my enclosures from Wiebetech and buy naked drives. There's often ridiculously low prices on closeouts at Circuit City (buy over the web but pick up at the store.) I scored 160GB for $40 after rebates the last time I did it. Particularly for very large drives, this is more cost effective.

When you inevitably need more space, pull the drive out and pop in another.

I took all the fans out of my G5, and I took the door off.

Now it looks like the VW "Thing" my sister drove in high school.

I have a widget that shows the temperature at various points inside the box, and so far, it's ok.