iMac won't turn on!

[ABassCube]

Hey,

My brother just got a new LCD iMac (800 MHz, SuperDrive), and it won't turn on, at all! It was working before, but it was doing some very strange things in OS X. We were installing 10.1.3 (Software Update), and my brother was basically trying to test the absolute limits of his computer by multitasking (with very processor-intensive tasks), until it crashed (yes, CRASHED, as in, had to force restart). So, we force restarted, but the 10.1.3 update had never finished. When it came up, there was no desktop picture at all. It was a blue background, but the finder was loaded. Most of the system prefs didn't work, and when we tried to run Software Update again it said there was an error.
Well, we were going to reinitialize and partition the drive anyway, and all his stuff was on his external drive, so we did that, reinstalled 9 and X, then tried to reinstall the 10.1.3 update. Then things got REALLY screwed up. For example, when we opened a menu and then closed it, it left nothing in it's place (when we closed it). Also, apps that we launched tried to open for a few seconds, and then just gave up, stopped launching. Then the Finder started to relaunch automatically, but it just kept bouncing, and never came up. We tried to Log Out, but nothing happened. So, we force-shut down (by holding in power button for several seconds), and try to turn again. Nothing happens at all!! We checked out all the connections, and it does not work!

We are going to call Apple tomorrow (too late now), but does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks.

Adam

[ABassCube]

OK, now this morning the iMac turned on fine! What the hell?!

Any idea of what could be causing this? The only thing I can think of is an overheating problem, but it was like that for about 3 hours, and it still didn't turn on when I went to sleep, so I don't even know how long it wasn't able to turn on for. It did feel hot at first, but later, it felt fine. I kind of doubt it's an overheating problem, but I don't know what else it could be.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Adam

[Bluefusion]

Ok, that is definitely not a good sign. The iMac, as far as I know, does not overheat in that way. (I could just tell you all this but I haven't seen you in school)... anyway, my G4 sometimes wouldn't turn on if it got too hot, and sometimes required as much as 5-7 hours of cooldown before it would work again. This means it probably had a fault PMU (power management unit). My G4 did have a defective one but we discovered it outside of the warranty period. As a solution, we simply leave it asleep when we're not using it Don't turn off a machine you expect is overheating if you want to get ANY work accomplished on it, as Apple built in way too sensitive PMUs on their machines. I've never heard of this happening with an iMac yet though.

What the hell was he doing on this thing? Processor intensive tasks? I was running Unreal Tournament in Classic in friggin' WINDOW MODE while rendering Bryce files, downloading 10.1.3 and ripping a CD (while updating my iPod) in the background and there wasn't any slowdown except when I switched programs. That literally should have overheated everything if it was going to at all. Just running Unreal in Window Mode in Classic overheated my G4 sometimes. Unreal Tournament in Window mode ran as smoothly as it did on my rage 128 (but not as good as it normally is on the GeForce2, of course), even with all the other crap going on. What on earth was he doing?

[ABassCube]

OK,

So we called Apple yesterday, and the guy we talked to seemed VERY doubtful that it was an overheating problem. It seemed like he wasn't really sure what exactly to do, so he told us to call again when we couldn't turn the computer on again. So far, it hasn't had any more problems.

Testuser, I did try reinitializing the drive when it was first acting strangely (before it couldn't turn on), because my brother wanted 9 and X on separate partitions anyway.

Well, everything's been working fine, so maybe it won't happen again (hopefully).

Adam.