[shredmiyagi]

I have a G5 PowerMac... Running OSX Tiger 10.4.11, 3GB RAM...

I've been leaving it on sleep and avoided booting as often as possible, because it began having some boot up problems, which I assumed were software related, because my whole OS was running slower and slower... but today, I plugged something into the same powerstrip that might have overloaded it. The powerstrip died, and the computer shut off...

Since that incident, it won't boot up at all. I get the start-up sound, white screen, Apple icon, load bar... Then it shuts off after trying for about a minute. I can't even open the CD drive to load the OSX or anything. None of boot-up commands work...

Hope it's not a fried motherboard... but I'm guessing it's hardware. Anyone have any ideas?

[turtle2472]

Originally Posted by shredmiyagi I have a G5 PowerMac... Running OSX Tiger 10.4.11, 3GB RAM... I've been leaving it on sleep and avoided booting as often as possible, because it began having some boot up problems, which I assumed were software related, because my whole OS was running slower and slower... but today, I plugged something into the same powerstrip that might have overloaded it. The powerstrip died, and the computer shut off... Since that incident, it won't boot up at all. I get the start-up sound, white screen, Apple icon, load bar... Then it shuts off after trying for about a minute. I can't even open the CD drive to load the OSX or anything. None of boot-up commands work... Hope it's not a fried motherboard... but I'm guessing it's hardware. Anyone have any ideas?

Power supply could be failing. Once it's loading the OS from HDD I think that kills most of the possibilities. Thermal overload of the PS is my guess at this point.

[RobUSVI]

First guess is a bad backup battery (located on the logic board). If the PMU becomes corrupt, the battery can die within a few hours. If the backup battery is good (3.5ish volts), then go into open firmware and issue a "reset-nvram" followed by a "reset-all".

If still having problems, boot holding down option to get to boot manager. Press eject button on keyboard to get optical drive to open. Boot from optical media to ensure not an OS issue.

[shredmiyagi]

Thank you for the help. I'm not good with computers!

I tried today, and reset nvram and PMU... I bought this computer second-hand about a year ago (fortunately fairly cheap!) and I didn't get a hardware test CD... But I did get Tiger OSX dvd many years ago for my old G4... So, I am installing that to my external firewire drive.

It seems to be working so far. Ran disc utility, and it said my HD (which is an old 76 GB drive) is non-repairable. I'm hoping all this means is I simply need a new internal HD?

[shredmiyagi]

And if the internal HD needs to be replaced... since it runs OSX without a problem via my external HD... Can anyone recommend the best HD for best value?

[RobUSVI]

Originally Posted by shredmiyagi Ran disc utility, and it said my HD (which is an old 76 GB drive) is non-repairable.

That means that there is filesystem corruption beyond what diskutility can fix. From the installer, after you select the language, you can go to diskutility from the menu/utilities. From there, you can format (erase) the disk. You will lose anything you had on the disk when you do this. Once done, exit out of diskutility and proceed with the rest of the install.

[Bryson]

Diskwarrior might be able to rescue it if you don't have a backup.