G4 Start-up Problem.....any ideas!!

[Fall_Guy]

Hi Guys...(newbie)

When I start-up first thing, It takes about 5-10 mins to get to the desktop. The HD collates extremely slowly in the following cycles:

It collates lengths of data (which vary) followed by a set pattern of 4 even bits.............this repeats itself until the desktop appears.

During this 5-10mins start-up the screen displays the following:

1) Grey screen with apple logo central
2) Blue screen with mac folder central
3) Blue screen with mac folder and ? mark (flashing) central
4) ....Fires up to desk-top

What Ive tried/done so far:

1) Run fsck......................................................... No Problem detected
2) Run Techtools and disk first aid (from boot)..........No Problem detected
3) Reset PMU chip ....................................................Problem remains
4) Changed Graphic card........................................... Problem remains
5) Removed Dimms and installed 1 (256mb)................. Problem remains
6) Reinitialised and zeroed HD ................................... Problem remains
7) Installed MacOS 9.2.2 and operated ........................ Problem remains
8) Installed OSX 10.2.8 and operated .......................... Problem remains
9) Reset permissions .............................................. Problem remains
10) reset Pram and Vram .......................................... Problem remains

Once the desktop is displayed everything works fine and if I restart at anytime it starts up pretty quickly. The only thing Ive noticed is if the computer goes to sleep, when I wake it up, the Icons are ragged, blurred and theres bits of ragged edge colour randomly placed on the desk-top, and I have to RESTART.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated as I don't know what to do next!

Many Thanks in advance
John

ps. if you require anymore info please let me know

 

[symphonix]

Wow, it sounds like you've tried everything. Have you zapped the PRAM using Cmd-Opt-P-R at startup? What hardware are you running on? Have you changed anything from the standard config, such as a graphics card? If it were me, after having tried all that and gotten nowhere I would be taking it in for repair, as its likely that it si a logic board problem.

 

[Fall_Guy]

Hi there, thanks for the responce. I'm running a G4/450 and yes I've zapped the Pram several times. I did replace the Original 128 rage card with a ATI Mac edition 32mb a couple of years ago, but I did slide back in the Original 128 rage, a few days ago, but the problems still there. Just for reference the G4/450 is bare now just running 10.2.8. (No firewire/usb connections or 3rd party hardware or sotfware. Can the Logic board be verivied/checked out before I take it to a Apple repair dealers.

 

[nixgeek]

This might sound silly, but do you have a TON of fonts installed on your system? Having a huge amount of fonts can slow your startup times drastically. This is just a hunch at the moment because here at my work site, someone with a PowerBook G4 had problems with her computer booting up slowly and running slowly. She also has a ton of fonts installed on her PowerBook.