HELP - G5 won't boot

C

ChaseB

Registered
Last night I heard a strange beep and everything froze up. I waited, and Safari crashed and the OS froze up again. Since I hadn't restarted in nearly 3 weeks I decided to just hold the power button down to restart. Since then, I get to the grey apple screen with the progress circle and it hangs there. After about 30 seconds to a minute the fans start spinning really fast and I end up holding down the power button.

I've read througb this forum as well as several Mac forums and have tried everything people have suggested for similar problems. However, I am unable to boot from a CD, when I try to enter single user mode it the screen hangs on some code after about halfway through.

Any idea what the problem is, and any suggestions to fix it? The Apple store isn't open today due to New Years, and I desperatly need to get this working, both for my job and peace of mind. If you can't offer any suggestions, do you think that this is a hard disk crash, and if so what are the chances of being able to recover my files? Or does it sound like a memory issue, in which case how fast can it be fixed?

Any help/comments appreciated. Thanks.
 
One beep is usually memory problems.

Can you get to the Option-boot screen?
Press power button, and hold the Option key - you should get a blue screen with 2 arrows, and your boot volumes.
If you get that, find your restore DVD, and try to boot to the Apple Hardware Test. You will find that listed on the label of the restore DVD. Choose to boot to the Hardware test at the option-boot screen by selecting that volume, and clicking on the right-facing arrow (it can take a minute or two to allow this selection, wait for it), and you should be able to boot to the hardware test. run the extended test if you get there.
 
DeltaMac said:
One beep is usually memory problems.

Can you get to the Option-boot screen?
Press power button, and hold the Option key - you should get a blue screen with 2 arrows, and your boot volumes.
If you get that, find your restore DVD, and try to boot to the Apple Hardware Test. You will find that listed on the label of the restore DVD. Choose to boot to the Hardware test at the option-boot screen by selecting that volume, and clicking on the right-facing arrow (it can take a minute or two to allow this selection, wait for it), and you should be able to boot to the hardware test. run the extended test if you get there.
Click to expand...

OK, I am able to get to the blue screen with the two arrows and a picture of my harddrive. I insert the disc (I can't find my original disc, only my upgrade disc), I put it in and I then have two icons, my harddrive and the Mac OS X Upgrade Disc icon.

If I click on the harddrive icon it hangs at the grey screen with the spinning circle.

If I click on the upgrade disc icon I can get to the install screen, everything runs really slowly and eventually locks up.
 
Would be VERY helpful to find the original restore DVD. That's the one that has the Apple Hardware test, and can tell you a lot.
If you can't find that disk, and it seems you can't boot to any disk right now - take your G5 to an Apple service, and have it tested
I suspect a failed hard drive....
 
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