[SledgeHammer]

The school newspaper office has two G5 towers that they use to produce the paper. My roommate is the news editor, and he just IMed me saying one of them is behaving very strangely. The computers are usually left on all the time; when someone came into the office this morning, the fans were running full speed and there was nothing on the monitor. They've tried turning both monitor and computer on and off. Tried unplugging everything from each other and the wall and plugging it all back in. Each time they start up the computer it turns on, but nothing appears on the monitor. He says the monitor behaves as if it is on but the computer is not. After about a minute, the fans ramp up to full speed again. Also, the computer does not appear on the network, as it normally does. I'm out of town, so I'm getting all this info over AIM and can't check it out myself. Any help or suggestions anyone could give would be helpful. I suggested trying to start it in Target Disk mode to get the files they need off of it (and possibly try to diagnose the problem better), but they haven't tried yet, because they don't have a firewire cable handy. The G5 is a single processor (not sure what speed) running 10.2.8. The monitor is a Samsung Syncmaster 191t flatscreen.

[Paul]

Is there a CD in the drive? sounds like it is trying to boot off a CD (which would make the fans run full blast)...

Try to boot off the restore/install CD and do a disk repair.

[Ebby]

Boot up and hold down "T" to enter Target disk mode. You can use your second mac (via firewire and disk utility) to repair the drive if you can. (It may be fried)

Or you can try to boot off the Startup CD to do the same thing.

If neither of these work, you have a serious problem with your G5's. I also recommend upgrading to a minimum of OS 10.3.4 and make sure you get the G5 firmware update. (Dangerous, but absolutly necessary) There are some need-to-have G5 fan updates because hard drives were burning up and crapping out left and right.

[SledgeHammer]

Seems the problem had something to do with the power strip it was plugged into. Plugged directly into the wall or into a different power strip, everything worked fine.

[Ebby]

Wow! Luuuuucckey! Our family had some horrendous disasters with G5's. Yet they are still chugging away.