iMac G5 won't boot up, please help >_<

F

Frozenflame

Registered
Lately my computers been freezing up randomly whether I'm on the internet, playing Halo, or on World of Warcraft, so I have been doing Disk Utility permission repairs more often and ran my DiskWarrior CD. It found a few errors but thats it, I thought the problem would be fixed but once more it froze up and I turned off the computer again. However this time when it tried to boot up, it would only have a grey background with the old looking Mac folder and the finder face on it. This finder face also alternated with a "?" graphic. I'm guessing it can't start or find finder. I tried running Disk Warrior again but it can't even find my harddrive(Probably because Finder isn't working).

I have no idea whats going on? Can anyone help me with this issue? I have a warranty n the computer but I already went about a few weeks ago because of the freezing problem earlier and thats where I got my Disk Warrior CD which has done some miracles for me already. Problem is the nearest Mac store is about 50 minutes away and I hate driving there. Plus Mac's website charges for support too, which is also lame =/

Even if there is no way to fix it to get it back to what it was, I am willing to do a system restore(if there is one on mac)? and reinstall everything. All I really need on it are my WC3, WoW, Halo, Internet, and Photoshop. I'll live losing my music >_<

BUT if theres a better way to fix it without losing my data, please help!
 
At the very least you could perform an "Archive and Install" of Mac OS X. This only replaces the System folder and leaves everything else intact. It's much better than System Restore, especially that found in XP. ;)

Just select Customize during the installation to select what kind of installation you want to perform. It's usually in the section where it asks what drive you want to install it on.
 
How do I go about doing that? Remember when I turn on the computer, it stays on that grey background with the "?" Finder icon and won't go further. I'm posting this on an older Mac of mine. Is there a certain button press I need to hit while its starting up? Or do I need a disk?
 
Insert the OS X install disc and restart the Mac. After the Mac chime, hold down the C key to boot from the disc.
 
Firstly u did not mention the OS on ur iMAc . Considering Mac OS X on ur machine try the following steps to solve ur problem
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install CD or DVD.
2. Restart Mac, immediately after the bong, hold down the C key until the Apple logo appears.
3. When the Installer reaches the INTRODUCTION phaze, click on Utilities at the top of the screen, and drop down to Disk Utility.
4. Click the First Aid tab.
5. Highlight the boot hard drive volume or partition.
6. Click Repair Disk.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until the scan comes up all clean and good (and run it one more time).
8. Quit Disk Utility and the OS Installer and reboot.

Hope this works 4 u . Best Luck
 
all i can find is my old mac osx 10.2.8 disk for this G4, my G5 with the problem has a higher OSX, that and the disk wouldn't boot up when I held C, it used to when I tried Disk repairs with the disk warrior CD, but now no disk works. I'm desperate enough to do a system restore, is there any way to do it without having the disk?
 
You can do a system Restore (Archive & Install)
but you do need your System Discs or a retail copy of a system disc.

System Discs should always be kept close to the machine.
I've seen so many people say they can't find their system discs.
 
So true. I have mine in the same plastic wrapping with the documentation it shipped with in a safe place. Very important to place the system discs in a safe place where no one else can move them.
 
im having the exact same problem but everything i do seems to make it worse ....My pc was freezing .....applications not opening wasw told to unistall nortans antivirus and now its not booting up at all , i tried the installation disk but where it ask yoiu for the desitination there is no drive to load it on ..im clueless on a what to do as well .. the disk utiliy i get an error (-9972) the underlying task reported failure on exit..
 
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