Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

SonicDark · Feb 11, 2005, 04:23 AM

After spending close to 3+ hours on the phone with Apple I'm getting frustrated. The problem of it not shutting down or restarting correctly after using it for a few hours is still there.

I have a 1.8 G5 single with 2 gigs ram, 74 gig Raptor HD, etc. After reading a few people I see that going to the Apple store is pointless as it still has the same problem. What can I do to fix the problem or do I just have to sell it?

Jeff

Detrius · Feb 11, 2005, 08:44 AM

Can you be more specific? What do you mean by "not shutting down or restarting correctly after using it for a few hours?"

SonicDark · Feb 11, 2005, 01:49 PM

Originally posted by Detrius:
Can you be more specific? What do you mean by "not shutting down or restarting correctly after using it for a few hours?"

So I turn on my G5 in the morning. I use it sparingly during the day and then at night I attempt to shut it down via Apple >> Shutdown. The computer screen dims and it just sits there with this circle spinning. I have to manually power it down as 5-15 minutes later it will just keep spinning.

If I just turn on the Mac and restart or shutdown instantly then it will shut down. The problem seems to be affecting quite a few of us on the Apple forums.

It makes no difference if I have my iPod, printer, USB wireless keyboard and external USB drive plugged in. The problem is the same.

Detrius · Feb 11, 2005, 11:08 PM

If you boot your machine in verbose mode, it will tell you what is going on when you tell it to shut down:

boot holding down command-option-o-f
enter these commands:
setenv boot-args '-v'
bye

Your machine should now boot in verbose mode. If you have a kernel panic, it will spit out on the screen. When you shut the machine down, it will tell you have is going on. This is the info we need to give you any further information.

BTW, this is an OS X/software issue--not a Power Mac G5 specific issue.

SonicDark · Feb 12, 2005, 01:32 AM

When I boot into that mode it will give me the option of entering commands or are they specifically for the terminal? Sorry, I'm a new Mac / OS X user, as I've used PCs all my life

bighead · Feb 12, 2005, 12:18 PM

It doesn't give you the option of entering arguments. It tells the OS to show the real boot screen rather than the pretty gray apple is shows ordinarily. It's great for diagnosing boot problems, and you might even get lucky with a shutdown problem.

I agree with Detrius, though, this is definitely a software issue and highly unlikely to be related to hardware. Do you run any filesharing software like LimeWire, Poisoned, or the like? If so, that would be the first and most likely cause of corruption leading to problems such as the ones you're experiencing.

Detrius · Feb 12, 2005, 01:05 PM

Originally posted by SonicDark:
When I boot into that mode it will give me the option of entering commands or are they specifically for the terminal? Sorry, I'm a new Mac / OS X user, as I've used PCs all my life

Open Firmware is like the BIOS on a PC. However, this is not something that users are expected to actually use--so there isn't a graphical user interface pasted on top of the settings. It's a command-line interface. You only need to type the two commands, and this is the extent of your interaction. You can read the rest, but you can't interact with it.

SonicDark · Mar 5, 2005, 02:04 AM

Well there is a 180+ post thread over on the Apple forums with regards to this issue. I currently have my G5 at the Apple store in Santa Monica, CA. I have a Western Digtal Raptor and 2 gigs of Corsair RAM and they gave some fuss to that but everything passes hardware test, it worked fine in my PC and it caused the same problem with the OEM Apple stuff so I doubt that is my problem. They had never heard of it and Apple had no idea after escalating my call to a higher level. Has to be a hardware problem as tons of users are having the same problem with no success.

BrettOZ · Mar 14, 2005, 06:18 PM

Why Shut Down - Just put it to Sleep

hedgehogfrenzy · Mar 14, 2005, 08:20 PM

I've read the the last build (10.3.9) of Panther will fix some shutdown and sleep issues with Power Macs. Nothing official, but may a little hope.....

- David

justmetoo · Jul 7, 2006, 02:42 PM

Just a shot in the dark (as I'm having the same issue, and have browsed a bit), but I saw a thread somewhere report that resetting the SMU did some good (PMU on older Macs).

AND btw, for all those people out there who don't sleep or powerdown their PMs, where do you live??? I get electrical storms all the time, and just don't feel comfortable leaving it plugged in, even with a $200 UPS... Then there is the power bill issue, are you all in non-deregulated utility states???

Books · Jul 8, 2006, 09:42 PM

Just a thought, but my friend has a SP 1.8, and he said he had that problem, until he updated the firmware.