I'm hoping someone can help me on this, it's driving me crazy. I have a B&W G3 with a G4 550 upgrade in it running 10.2.6. When I boot the machine, I get the chime, the screens (I have 2) come on and the apple appears. I hear the hard drive initialize with a few clicks and then nothing. I listen carefully and every once in a while I hear the hard drive make a few clicks. Mind you, these are not heavy clunks (big difference between a click and a clunk) like the drive head crashing. These are the usual read clicks. It will sit like this for about 20 minutes clicking now and then and all of a sudden the spinning wheel will appear and it will boot normall from there on. I have tried zapping the PRAM, reselecting my startup volume, booting with my cable modem turned off. I suspected the internal battery, but I unplugged the machine for a few minutes and booted without my modem plugged in to avoid network time sync and the time stayed correct. As a last resort, I will try replacing it anyway. I have heard that can cause problems. I have run disk first aid. Did it manually through single user mode using FSCK. I am stumped. The odd thing about his is that it happened a few months back for a few days and then went away. Now it's back to stay. I'm afraid the drive may be failing, but once it boots, it runs flawlessly. Oh yea, and the machine boots normally from the Jaguar CD. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Startup Delay Before Spinning Wheel Appears
- Thread starter griz
- Start date
DeltaMac
Tech
Just one internal hard drive? Have you tried disconnecting the second monitor ( and removing the second vid card, unless you have a dual display vid card) Also disconnect anything else external to the system (no printer/scanner) just one mouse and one keyboard (NO USB HUB), so a very basic system, start with the shift key held down, (wait, continue with the shift key, if it takes 20 minutes---) you should see that it is using SAFE MODE, then try running the Disk Utility/ click on First Aid tab/ click on your hard drive, and run repair permissions. then restart, see if that seems more normal, then SHUT DOWN and let it set for a few minutes (maybe even unplug power) start it normally, see if it's back to whatever you consider normal. If you have several external USB devices, start plugging them in one at a time, and shut down, then reboot (yeah, takes a while) the goal is to discover if one of those devices is causing you problems (older hubs might be the worst offenders) good luck!
DeltaMac, I have tried all that you describe except for removing the video card and detaching externals.
I went through the Safe mode start and ran FSCK.
It even takes 20 minutes when booting into Safe Mode so it is a result of something before the system begins to load. Or it is failing to find the boot block right away.
I'll try eliminating the external hardware and see what happens.
I went through the Safe mode start and ran FSCK.
It even takes 20 minutes when booting into Safe Mode so it is a result of something before the system begins to load. Or it is failing to find the boot block right away.
I'll try eliminating the external hardware and see what happens.
Well, it appears I solved it. After detaching all hardware, pulling some RAM and having no luck. I decided to do a clean install. After installing 10.2. It booted right up. I have added all updates and security patches and still working fine. I am very surprised that after doing disk firstaid this problem wasn't found. It was obvious disk related. Apparently something with a bit of data that wasn't being found. Anyway, thanks for the tips.