Lost power, now all I get is a blue screen.

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Firepoet

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Last night my house lost power. Now when I boot the G5 after it is done loading with the grey screen and the grey apple, it switches over to an all blue screen. After about 5 minutes I get a pointer, but that is it. I thought something bad had happened to my drives so I took some HDs from the G4 and put them in the G5. They boot to the same blue screen. I've run a plethora of tools and they all come back and say the hardware is working just dandy. Any ideas?
 
Ok I tried booting into safe boot, and the HD comes up just fine with all my data. I even tried deleting all the log in items incase there was a problem there, but I still can't boot up normally.
 
Have you tried repairing permissions through Disk Utility? Have it repair permissions until it doesn't give you any more messages about it fixing permissions.

Also, you might want to run a Verify Disk to see if Disk Utility finds a problem on the hard drive.
 
I did both of those, and everything is fine. I even tried doing single user mode and renaming prefrences and caches, as prefrences_old and caches_old as someone else suggested. Still not working.
 
Have you tried zapping the PRAM? Hold down Apple-Option-P-R right after the startup chime and let it chime for about 4 times after. Then let go of the keys and see if it boots up normally after that.
 
Yes I have. I thought that would have worked. Since the drive works in safe boot I can't think of anything else to do beside zapping the pram.
 
I've looked up this problem all over the internet and they all talk about the same thing. Delete this folder, fix permissions, ect. but what they all don't cover is that I took a drive out of another computer, reinstalled the OS, put it in the G5 and I get the blue screen. If it was permissions or corrupt file directories then a fresh new HD should boot just fine.
 
I took out the video card, and put in an old one and the computer works just fine. What kind of video card problem lets it work in safe mode, or if I boot to a CD, but doesn't work once the computer is fully booted?
 
If everything went back to normal once you replaced the video card, then that could be thr culprit. It's possible that the video card took some damage from the power outage. To test, try and put the problematic video card back in and see if it still exhibits the same problems. If so, then it's the video card.

Was this old video card that you put in just now the original one that came with the G5? If so, what card was the one causing the problem?
 
Yes the old card came with the machine. The new card was an ati radeon xt800 pro. But I still don't quite understand. If the card was damaged, why would it work under safe mode?
 
Firepoet said:
Yes the old card came with the machine. The new card was an ati radeon xt800 pro. But I still don't quite understand. If the card was damaged, why would it work under safe mode?
Click to expand...

OK, was the X800XT a PC version of this card that you flashed for use on the Mac? If so, then this explains the problem. The PC version of the X800XT doesn't have enough space to hold the Mac firmware. People sometimes get duped into this when they buy from eBay or they just don't know that there is this difference between the Mac and PC version. The Mac version can be flashed to be used on the PC since it has enough for the larger Mac firmware. However, it's not the case the other way around. The PC-version firmware is much smaller and thus the Mac-version firmware is too large to fit into firmware space of the PC-version card. Sometimes it might work, but that's the exception not the rule. Hope this makes sense.
 
Have you tried installing the ATI drivers for the Mac from ATI? I know that they have the drivers for some of their cards on the Mac. Reinstalling that might help. It's possible that maybe the ATI Mac driver got mucked up somehow...

The other option is to try and reflash the card with the Mac firmware. Maybe the firmware somehow got corrupted.

I'm starting to run out of solutions at this point. :p
 
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