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TICKET ARCHIVE -> G3 Sage All In One Gray Screen
scotlovesmacs - Jul 28, 2006 - 10:02 pm
Hi Everyone! My daughter's G3 (Sage all-in-one) just quit. Her screen froze, so she did a shut down and restart with the manual power button. Now all we get is a gray screen with two bands of white across the Apple logo, one approx 2" tall and another approx 1" tall, 1" below the first. I tried running a Tiger disk utility (although her's runs Panther 10.2.3) and after going through all the repairs, the final screen indicated: "Repair not complete, the underlying task could not be completed, and the disk cannot be repaired", or something to that effect... Nothing wierd or out of the ordinary regarding the machine's use or activity over the last few days/weeks since she started using this machine one year ago. Lots of data on the hard drive that we'd like to resurrect and continue using. This just seems too wierd to be other than a simple problem. And no, I don't have the original Panther intstall CD's. This was an eBay purchase which has been working great for over a year. Any help greatly appreciated.
Thunderthud - Jul 28, 2006 - 11:24 pm
You can try Disk Warrior to try to resurrect the drive's directory and Data Rescue II to try to save the data off to another drive, CD/DVD, etc.
Both of these are available on bootable CDs from your Apple store, CompUSA or via the Internet. Disk Warrior is alsoft.com and Data Rescue is www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php.
If either of these is successful you will need to reformat your drive and (at least) reinstall OSX.
I don't think it will address your problem but another thing to try is to reset the CUDA switch on your Mac's motherboard. You must disconnect everything from the back of your Mac and open it up.
The CUDA switch looks like a little gray (sometimes red) doorbell button. It is indeed a momentary switch like a doorbell button. This is always done with the POWER OFF!
Hold it down and count to 5, button things up and restart.
Sometimes a power outage/surge can play havoc with your Mac's electronics and resetting the CUDA sometimes addresses that but from your report it doesn't sound like anything like this happened to your machine.
Both of these are available on bootable CDs from your Apple store, CompUSA or via the Internet. Disk Warrior is alsoft.com and Data Rescue is www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php.
If either of these is successful you will need to reformat your drive and (at least) reinstall OSX.
I don't think it will address your problem but another thing to try is to reset the CUDA switch on your Mac's motherboard. You must disconnect everything from the back of your Mac and open it up.
The CUDA switch looks like a little gray (sometimes red) doorbell button. It is indeed a momentary switch like a doorbell button. This is always done with the POWER OFF!
Hold it down and count to 5, button things up and restart.
Sometimes a power outage/surge can play havoc with your Mac's electronics and resetting the CUDA sometimes addresses that but from your report it doesn't sound like anything like this happened to your machine.
scotlovesmacs - Jul 29, 2006 - 8:45 am
Thanks. I'm familiar with Disk Warrior and I have one that I've used on my OS9 machines, including my beige G3's. I'll give it a try. Do you know where I can get a take-apart manual for the all-in-one. I have no idea of how to open this type of case to get to the CUDA switch you mentioned. Thanks very much. Scot.
Thunderthud - Jul 29, 2006 - 9:54 am
No, Scot, I have no idea where you can get such a manual. You can try searching Apple's web site.
scotlovesmacs - Jul 31, 2006 - 7:04 pm
Hi. I ran Disk Warrior, which said directory replacement was succesfull, but same problem on restart. TechTool Pro didn't help, nor Norton. (Norton said many files couldn't be repaired) I tried to load Panther disk which I scrounged, and upon restart got the following: (Everything listed is in a blackline box over a gray screen in white lettering)
panic (cpu 0 caller 0x002DE020); Unable to find drivers for this platform: "PowerMac2.1"
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0: 0x00095564 0x00095A7C 0x00026838 0x0002DE020 0x002BD350 0x002BD118 0x002BD880 0x002BE1EC 0x000A9654
Proceeding back via exception chain: Exception state (sv=0x00525A00)
PC=00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x000000000; R1=0x00000000;XCP=0x00000000(Unknown)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.0.0: Sat Mar 26 14:52:22 PST 2005; root:xnu-792.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC
No debugger configured - dumping debug information
MSR=00001030
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x00095564 0x00095C64 0x00026838 0x002DE020 0x002BD350 0x002BD118 0x002BDB80 0x002BE1EC 0x000A9654
Proceeding back via exception chain: Exception state (sv=0x00525A00)
PC=00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x000000000; R1=0x00000000;XCP=0x00000000(Unknown)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.0.0: Sat Mar 26 14:52:22 PST 2005; root:xnu-792.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC
panic: We are hanging here...
The above text is exactly as it appears on the screen as this is written. Any thoughts for a quick fix and resurrection? Thanks again in advance. Scot.
panic (cpu 0 caller 0x002DE020); Unable to find drivers for this platform: "PowerMac2.1"
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0: 0x00095564 0x00095A7C 0x00026838 0x0002DE020 0x002BD350 0x002BD118 0x002BD880 0x002BE1EC 0x000A9654
Proceeding back via exception chain: Exception state (sv=0x00525A00)
PC=00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x000000000; R1=0x00000000;XCP=0x00000000(Unknown)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.0.0: Sat Mar 26 14:52:22 PST 2005; root:xnu-792.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC
No debugger configured - dumping debug information
MSR=00001030
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x00095564 0x00095C64 0x00026838 0x002DE020 0x002BD350 0x002BD118 0x002BDB80 0x002BE1EC 0x000A9654
Proceeding back via exception chain: Exception state (sv=0x00525A00)
PC=00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x000000000; R1=0x00000000;XCP=0x00000000(Unknown)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.0.0: Sat Mar 26 14:52:22 PST 2005; root:xnu-792.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC
panic: We are hanging here...
The above text is exactly as it appears on the screen as this is written. Any thoughts for a quick fix and resurrection? Thanks again in advance. Scot.
Thunderthud - Jul 31, 2006 - 7:22 pm
It sounds as though your disk's drivers have been damaged. Boot from the Panther install CD and select Drive Setup from the Utilities menu. Have it reinstall the disk drivers on your hard drive.
If this is successful have Disk Utility from the install CD (while still booted from it) repair any errors on the drive. Do this as many times as is necessary until no errors are reported.
If this is successful have Disk Utility from the install CD repair permissions on the drive. If it will not allow you to do this it means that Disk Utility can not find a clean version of OS X on the drive and you will have to reinstall Panther.
If permission repair is successful you should be able to boot from the hard drive and check out what may still be there.
If Drive Setup is unable to reload the drivers then I'm afraid some sort of hardware problem is likely. If you can boot from the Panther CD you may be able to run the Hardware tests but you most likely will have to have the machine looked at by a professional. If it's repairable, and you might spend a lot of money finding out that it is not, it could cost a pretty penny to fix it. You might want to consider a new machine and trying to salvage whatever data you can from the hard drive. Data Rescue II will allow you to recover data to a different drive; in fact, it insists on it. You can extract the drive and put it in an enclosure to be used as an external drive.
If this is successful have Disk Utility from the install CD (while still booted from it) repair any errors on the drive. Do this as many times as is necessary until no errors are reported.
If this is successful have Disk Utility from the install CD repair permissions on the drive. If it will not allow you to do this it means that Disk Utility can not find a clean version of OS X on the drive and you will have to reinstall Panther.
If permission repair is successful you should be able to boot from the hard drive and check out what may still be there.
If Drive Setup is unable to reload the drivers then I'm afraid some sort of hardware problem is likely. If you can boot from the Panther CD you may be able to run the Hardware tests but you most likely will have to have the machine looked at by a professional. If it's repairable, and you might spend a lot of money finding out that it is not, it could cost a pretty penny to fix it. You might want to consider a new machine and trying to salvage whatever data you can from the hard drive. Data Rescue II will allow you to recover data to a different drive; in fact, it insists on it. You can extract the drive and put it in an enclosure to be used as an external drive.
scotlovesmacs - Jul 31, 2006 - 7:53 pm
Thanks so very much. I'll try the disk driver repair utility as you suggested, If the worst happens, and we cannot reboot the disk, can you tell me how to get the utility you mentioned, Data Rescue II? Thanks again. Scot.
Thunderthud - Jul 31, 2006 - 9:00 pm
As I mentioned in my 1st reply Data Rescue II is available on a bootable CD from your Apple store, CompUSA or via the Internet. Data Rescue is from Prosoft Engineering. Check it out at
www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
scotlovesmacs - Aug 1, 2006 - 10:40 am
Sorry. I didn't read back and review your first post. My bad. Thanks for the help. I'll let you know how it turns out. Scot.
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