[Plant7575]

(1) My imac G3 quit booting. It starts up, then freezes on a grey screen even before the smiling mac would normally appear.

(2) Tried booting with Norton Utilities 6.0 CD. imac accessed the Norton CD then gave up and went back to the hard drive and froze again as before. I booted the Norton CD in my laptop to confirm that the CD is good.

(3) Tried booting the G3 with Apple's System Restore CD that came with the computer. This CD booted, and the HD showed up on the desktop. I used the option that put all of the old stuff in a folder then installed a new OS on the hard drive. After doing that, I was able to boot the computer off of the HD one time.

(4) The next time I booted the computer, i got the same problem as before (see step 1). I booted off of the System Restore CD again. This CD still booted, but now the HD is completely missing from the desktop, so I can't restore the system again.

(5) I tried booting the Hardware Diagonstic CD that came with the computer. I won't boot, just like the Norton CD (see step 2).

Now the questions:

(1) Is the HD physically dead? or just corrupt?

(2) If corrupt, how do I get it reformatted? And why won't some of the CDs boot?

(3) If the HD is dead, how do I go about getting and installing a replacement HD?

Thanks for any ideas.

[Will C]

Hiya,
Sounds like the HD is dead, but need to ask a few more things:-
A- What model of G3 iMac is it - Bondi blue 233MHz, 350MHz, or DV etc?
B - What OS do you run?

If it is one of the later ones like the 'DV' models, it could be that the HD is causing trouble on the shared IDE bus which also carries the CD/DVD drive.

Installing a replacement HD is quite simple for the later G3 iMacs and not too difficult on the first ones - I'll try and find a link to some guides.

[Will C]

Here is a guide for the later models - don't worry about its guide prices for HDs - it is a few years old now!

[Will C]

And here is a guide to the original Bondi models

[Plant7575]

Thanks for the info.

I'm not sure of the model, or processor speed, as the machine is dead and thus can't tell me that info. It is the "Flower Power" model, which if I recall was neither the earliest or latest model.

(1) How can you tell whether this is one of the earlier or later G3 imacs?

(2) What kind of a hard drive should I get to replace the current one? I looked at MacZone and MacWarehouse, but all of the different drive types confused me (I'm much more astute with software than with hardware). I'm sure that only certain ones have the correct connections and the correct physical size, but how do I find out what drive to get?

Doug

[Plant7575]

Oh yea, Forgot to answer the OS question.

The computer came with OS 9.1. I had upgraded it to 9.2.2. But since I ran the System Restore disk, I'm back to OS 9.1 for now.

Also, I've got a G4 Laptop if that would be useful somehow. In the old days, I remember hooking up a laptop to a desktop to exchange files. Is that still doable with these newer models? Could this help?

Doug

[Will C]

Ok flower power is one of the later ones so easy to replace the HD - instructions like the first link I posted.

Can you boot you iMac up in Target disk mode? i.e. Power up holding down the 'T' key. If you connect it to your power book with a firewire cable, it should mount as an external disk - you may be able to backup data.

1. Here is a guide to identifying G3 iMacs

2. You will need an IDE/ATA (PATA) hard drive - not a Serial ATA one, don't bother with anything over 120GB as that model of iMac cannot address anything larger. Modern 7200 rpm drives are fine, best with an 8MB cache. Good makes currently seem to be Seagate and Western Digital.
I used to have a 120GB drive in my G3 iMac and it worked really well - it is now in a firewire case.

I would suggest you avoid using Norton - used to be good, but not in recent years.

[Plant7575]

Thanks for the good info. I have not had a chance to get back to check this thread until today. The dead computer is hindering my internet access.

Target disk mode: Let's see if I've got this right. (1) Hook the Powerbook and Imac up Firewire to Firewire. (2) Boot the Powerbook. (3) Boot the Imac with the T key down and see if it shows up on the desktop of the Powerbook. Is that the way it is supposed to work?

As for Norton, what's a better set of disk utilities for the newer Macs?

Doug

[Will C]

Hi Doug

'Target disk mode: Let's see if I've got this right. (1) Hook the Powerbook and Imac up Firewire to Firewire. (2) Boot the Powerbook. (3) Boot the Imac with the T key down and see if it shows up on the desktop of the Powerbook. Is that the way it is supposed to work?'

-Yes absolutely.

Disk Warrior seems to be the preferred disk app round these parts, and also Tech Tool Pro - if you do a search on this site you will probably be able to find a good discussion on the subject as it comes up every now and again.

[Plant7575]

Thanks again

I had just done some searching on the forums and found the same recommendations for DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro.

Got to get a Firewire cable and order a new HD

Doug