[Anilan]

I left my iMac on overnight lastnight and I went to check on it this morning. I moved the mouse and noticed that everything had stopped working and I had to press the power button. I turned it back on and the gray screen would appear and it will sit there like that for a while. Then there would be the flashing question mark. I then restarted the computer and put my restore CD in. I ran Disk Utility but noticed that my hard drive was not mounted. I checked out the Apple Support site and went through everything there relating to the "gray screen" or "flashing question mark" problem.

This is what I tried:
- Resetting the PRAM (Command+Option+P+R)
- Removed the user installed RAM
- Booting with only the power cable plugged in
- I pressed Command+Option+O+F and typed in: reset-nvram/reset-all
- Ran Apple Hardware Test from the Restore CD and everything seemed to check out

I tried pressing and holding X and Ctrl+S but none of those worked either. It continued to boot to the gray screen.

It would seem there is something wrong with my hard drive since Apple's site said that the question mark only appears if it cannot locate the System Folder? If the hard drive is the case, is it covered in Apple's standard one year warranty?

Any help would be great.

System:
iMac G4 1.25
256 MB
OS 10.3.3

[discotronic]

Have you tried to reinstall the OS just to see if it is possible? It does sound like the hard drive is bad.

[Anilan]

Yes, I forgot to mention that I did try to install the OS again. When it asked me for the destination, the drive was not mounted and therefor did not show up as a destination.

[Anilan]

So umm... I talked to an Apple Service Representative and he said that this problem might be caused by data corruption (or software problems). However, is it possible that the corruption is so bad that Disk Utility can't recognize the drive as I have described above?

Anyways, if it is software related it will probably cost between $50 - $75 CDN to repair it. If it's physical it would still be under warranty.