Dead Mac?
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- agentfour
I fried my mac on the weekend(g4 466 os9.1)! Now i only get a grey screen with flashing question mark on startup. The error test came up with mem_/2/4 which is a memory error. I can boot up the software restore disc but when i have to choose somewhere to save the cdimg file i only have the one cd drive so i cant do the software restore. Can anyone please help or do i have to reinitilize and partition drives and then loose all my shit?? please help meeee!!
thankyou.
- airey0
have you tried norton disk doctor of disk warrior?
maybe install a copy of a disk tools utility on a firewire drive and boot from that?
- Beech0
oh yeah that happened to me a few years ago. sucked balls. I had to format and lost everything. Hope you backup your work and sorry I can't help any more than that :(
- BonSeff0
have you tried booting up from the os system disk? maybe pull the ram sticks out and retry? i had some bad ram stick on my g5 that buggered things up a while back. good luck man
- sykosis0
that means your firm wear cant find the OS on you HD... the HD could be toast or the... well it's most likely your HD... the reason you can boot off the restore cd is because it has a bootale OS written into it.
- agentfour0
thanks all.
i tried taking out the big ram stick but that didnt do anything. I have a firewire drive here at work which i may be able to borrow for the night and try booting from that but im not sure if that will do anything. I have most old stuff backed up but not the newer stuff.
- puter0
connect it to another mac in Firewire target mode and copy all your goodies.
Hold down the OPTION key while booting up and see if it finds your start up disk- if so choose it and it should start. Afterwards make sure the start up disk is selected in your System Preferences- and run all basic maintence (Re-build permissions)
- agentfour0
"connect it to another mac in Firewire target mode and copy all your goodies."
how do i do that?? can i staright up connect two macs via firewire?
I tried plugging in my external usb hard drive to do that but it wouldnt recognise it properly.
- kerus0
arg.. boot off a cd.. attach a firewire drive and grab everything you care about off the drive..
PROMPTLY format and install OS X.. there is a reason old operating systems are deemed obsolete.
- melk0
to connect using firewire to another mac reboot your dead machine holding down T on the keyboard (Target mode). If the drive aint fried it should load as an external drive on the second machine - so you can copy stuff across.
a little trick that works on fired HDs is to take it out of your machine put it in a ziplock bag and freeze it for about 2-3 hours in your freezer. trust me it actually works! its not a long term solution but will give you enough time to back up your hard drive. (friend did this about 6 months ago and he hasn't had a problem yet! weird!)
- shotoshi0
Had same prob after returning from 2 week holiday. It happens everytime I shutdown for any length of time.
So, what I did was to boot up from my OS 8.6 disc then restart pressing SHIFT + APPLE KEY + P + R and hold down until you hear the start up chimes twice in a row, then let go.
I think it's something to do with a PRAM error (that's what a mate told me to do and it works)
Have been putting up with this for a few years now but since I use my system every day I just put it to sleep at night (not shutdown)
The weird thing is, I can shut down for a couple of days and come back it will start up first time. But if I'm away for more than a week (only at xmas and new year) I get the suitcase with flashing question mark problem.
There's a good book called some thing like: Bombs and Sad Macs (can't remember title fully but good trouble shooting tome - probably updated now. Check out Amazon)
Good luck!
- pascii0
connect via firewire, copy goods, reinstall seleted os and go.
- agentfour0
okay so i tried a bunch of these suggestions and nothing seems to be working. When i attach it via firewire to another mac and try to startup as an external drive it says that the disk needs to be initialized and it only gives me the options 'eject' or 'initialize'.
When you say boot from disk do you mean the os software restore disk or a separate disk with just the os on it that youve made yourself?? sorry for my dumbness on the subject.
the freezer could be next!!!
- agentfour0
anyone?
- shotoshi0
I booted up with the official OS 8.6 disk that I got when I bought my system (Aug 1999)
- agentfour0
can i just re-install os9 as it is over the current os or is that not possible?
- shotoshi0
sounds like you have the same problem as me, so check my above post - this cured it for me, although not ideal 'cos I'd still like to know the cause of my problem.
- agentfour0
thanks all! my shit is fixed!
shotoshi;
this is what i had to do
http://docs.info.apple.com/artic…i had to boot off software disk, and run first aid to repair the disk. Then reset PRAM and then 'rebless' the system folder.
try all that and you may have the same luck!