G5 hanging coming out of sleep

K

ktwdallas

Registered
I have a single 1.8ghz G5 (one of the first) and I have a periodic problem where the computer will freeze coming out of standby. It appears that the drives are refusing to spin up, as I never hear anything.

I can move the mouse and the Cinema monitor will come out of standby and show my screen saver, but it won't actually start back up and go to the desktop. My only choice is to hold down the power button and force a restart.

...and, about 50% of the time when I force a reboot, it will take a couple of restarts before the drives start back up again to boot... otherwise I get the flashing question mark/folder.

I've done permission repairing, but this sounds like either a drive that's in the process of failing, or something else hardware related. I can't find any other rhyme or reason on when it does it (i.e. software that I'm running or tasks that I'm doing.)

I'm a recent PC-to-Mac convert. On the PC, I'd be pulling drive controllers and swapping out parts to isolate the problem that this point. On the G5 I'm kind of lost on what to do, or where to go for help if it is a hardware problem.
 
I can only ask two things. Did you repair permissions from the CD that you got with your mac or from Disk Utility in The Apps folder?

Have you made any recent big software/hardware changes?
 
Look for a firmware update for your model. It may show up in Software Update (Apple Menu>Software Update). ** I'm not sure at all this will help. I believe it was a solution to the single processor machines not sleeping fully.

Also, are you running 10.3.6?

Doug
 
I did the repair permissions from Cocktail, which is just a GUI for the utility on the drive (I'm assuming the same utility that gets run via Disk Utility).
 
Also, have you checked to be sure the hard drive is seated correctly?

and

Do you have access to a commercial disk utility, either Diskwarrior 3 or Techtool 4 or "Deluxe" (which is the Applecare cheapo version)? Don't use Norton.

Doug
 
I do run Software Update pretty regularly, and there's nothing there at the moment (except an iSight update, which I don't have).

Yes, Panther 10.3.6.

On software, nothing that I haven't been running since I got the machine a while back (from a friend who was the original owner), and the hanging has only started in the past few weeks. I do have stuff like Konfabulator running which I probably need to shut down. Intermittent problems are the worst to troubleshoot because you can't reproduce them to really test any solutions.
 
I've had the exact same symptoms and problems on an old Blue and White G3 I used to have. I had to swap out the drive for a new one and the problem remedied itself. As a note of warning, get all essential data off of the drive ASAP and call up apple for a replacement drive (or buy one and install it yourself).
 
I've replaced the hard drive and so far it seems to be working. It was getting a little ridiculous, having to hard reset something like 20 or 30 times in the last 2 days (with deadlines looming, of course)
 
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