[tufdaawg]

hi all. I have a 1.9GHz/ OS 10.4.10 iMac G5 (isight) and it won't work now.

the story: i stepped away from my imac for a minute or two when it was on, but not doing anything (no program runnning, no games running, etc.) and when I came back there was an error message on the screen (please restart your computer, etc (in several languages)) and then i pressed the power button to shut it down and then restart it. after it restarted with the start-up chime, the screen went black and then about 30 seconds later the fan started up really loudly and that was it. nothing else happened; didn't go anywhere, just a black screen and a loud fan, no text, no nothing. screen, power-on light, and nothing else. and i have a cd in the tray that i can't get out to insert my hardware test cd, or software restore cd. that dang cd won't come out mo matter what i do.

[dowNNshift]

What happened was a Kernel Panic... pretty much the Mac equivalent to the blue screen of death.

Have you tried un-plugging the iMac from the wall, count to 30, then plug it in? If you hear the start up chime, then the Power-On-Self-Test passed. Try resetting the PRAM, holding down Command+Option+P+R during boot up.

To get the CD out of the tray, hold down the mouse button during boot up and this will force an eject.

If resetting the PRAM doesn't help, since you said the fans were going full tilt with a black screen then the SMU (System Management Unit) may need resetting. A search for your model of iMac on the Apple Knowledge Base will give you step-by-step instructions.

Worst case scenario, you'll need to pay a visit to an Apple Service Provider or an Apple Store Genius Bar -- or you can always call AppleCare directly.

[tufdaawg]

hi. thanks for responding. i tried to reset the pram after restarting, but no luck.

it sill is a black screen, and then the cd powers up (or at least it sounds like it is loading) and then 30 seconds later the loud fan noise.

[dowNNshift]

I looked up the Apple Knowledge Base article for ya on how to reset the SMU:

iMac G5: How to Reset the SMU

Give that a try, but only reset the SMU once and one time only.