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F_Elz · Jun 19, 2005, 04:56 AM

Ever since I installed Tiger once in a while I would shut down my mac overnight. Then once I turn it on it would take ages to get out of the grey apple screen. I would then have a screen with a folder that has a question mark on it. It seems it can't find my drive? It has happened 3+ times in the last month. I got tired and did a clean install. Same thing happened 3+ times. What is the problem

Panther never gave me problems, I dunno what to do... I am going crazy.

Any ideas on what the problem is?

iMac g4 800 15"
Tiger 10.4.1

moodymonster · Jun 19, 2005, 05:03 AM

have you run disk first aid (booting up from a system DVD)?

Does the clean install reformat the hard disk? I can't remember

Disk first aid may find a prob and fix it. Otherwise you may have to back all your stuff up, reformat and reinstall everything

I'd wait and see if anyone else has a better suggestion. Disk Warrior

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

may be able to help, haven't used it for years though.

F_Elz · Jun 19, 2005, 05:15 AM

I got this trying to boot from the install :|

analogika · Jun 19, 2005, 05:25 AM

"from the install" meaning "from the install disk"?

This may seem like a stupid question, but: is it a legal, store-bought copy?

If so, when you installed it, did you let it completely verify the install DVD (takes quite a while) or did you click "Skip"?

Because it sounds like your copy of the Tiger install disk may be corrupt... check for scratches or dirt on the underside if it's a legal copy.

moodymonster · Jun 19, 2005, 05:29 AM

I've never seen that happen without booting into verbose mode. I don't really know what to suggest, it could be a bad DVD.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106464

this doc has some stuff about OS X not booting properly.

F_Elz · Jun 19, 2005, 05:29 AM

Yup, its a legit copy of Tiger. Has no scratches and verified when I did a clean install. I am worried now, I hear a cracking sound when I start my imac

analogika · Jun 19, 2005, 05:41 AM

Crackling? Ouch.

Simplest case, the power cable may just be a little loose. Pull it out of the Mac and re-seat it firmly.

It does sound like your problem may not be with software, though.

F_Elz · Jun 19, 2005, 05:45 AM

is ... my hard drive dead ?

analogika · Jun 19, 2005, 06:32 AM

Originally Posted by moodymonster

I've never seen that happen without booting into verbose mode. I don't really know what to suggest, it could be a bad DVD.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106464

this doc has some stuff about OS X not booting properly.

That is not verbose mode.

That is a kernel panic.

analogika · Jun 19, 2005, 06:37 AM

Originally Posted by F_Elz

is ... my hard drive dead ?

If the machine won't boot from a startup DVD, then the hard drive is most likely NOT the issue.

Have you pulled off the power cable in the back of the machine and plugged it back in?

Does the "crackling" noise still happen when you switch it on?

You're asking a bunch of guys to diagnose your computer who have nothing more to go on than fuzzy pic of a kernel panic and vague descriptions and a "cracking" noise, remember.

Take it to a service technician ASAP, is my opinion.

Millennium · Jun 19, 2005, 08:56 AM

Originally Posted by analogika

Take it to a service technician ASAP, is my opinion.

Agreed. Crackling noises are pretty much never a good sign.

The good news is that I don't think this is your hard drive. Bad RAM is the most common cause of kernel panics, so you may want to look into that; the technician can test it for you. However, I'm guessing that the problem is actually with your power supply, because bad RAM wouldn't explain the noises you're hearing. Either way, you need to get your computer to a technician immediately.

F_Elz · Jun 19, 2005, 12:29 PM

ok, will do. thanks.

Eriamjh · Jun 21, 2005, 08:01 PM

Tiger Heli

Superchicken · Jun 21, 2005, 08:57 PM

Did you buy Apple care?

jay3ld · Jun 21, 2005, 09:13 PM

Originally Posted by Millennium

Agreed. Crackling noises are pretty much never a good sign.

The good news is that I don't think this is your hard drive. Bad RAM is the most common cause of kernel panics, so you may want to look into that; the technician can test it for you. However, I'm guessing that the problem is actually with your power supply, because bad RAM wouldn't explain the noises you're hearing. Either way, you need to get your computer to a technician immediately.

I had a firewire+usb card i put in my mac and it caused allot of kernal panics.

i would remove anything that didnt come preinstalled on the computer and see how it runs.
that stupid card gave me trouble and if you got cards in it might be causing you trouble.

NeilCharter · Jun 22, 2005, 12:00 AM

Watch out for hard drive failures though....I bought a new drive a while back. After installing the new drive my old drive couldn't boot or mount. I finally managed to mount the drive but the drive wouldn't boot.

Basically although it had been running 24/7 for at least a year, the drive seems to be hanging on for dear life. Swapping in another drive and rebooting seemed to be the final straw.

My point is that a drive can seem to be fine and dandy and suddenly it goes.

badidea · Jun 22, 2005, 05:02 AM

I can't agree with Millennium's "good news" - from all what you described it sounds like your harddrive is just about to die - at least that's what and how it happened to me with one of my HDs a few months ago. First it sometimes didn't mount anymore, then I started to hear crackling/clicking noises and 1-2 days later it was dead!

Make a backup now, as long as you still can!!!!!!!!!!

F_Elz · Jun 22, 2005, 05:25 AM

Yea, I already backed up. I do have AppleCare though.

seanc · Jun 22, 2005, 04:10 PM

The cracking sound isn't like a breaking glass sound is it?

The beaking glass sound means that you have a memory problem.

If it's not a breaking glass sound, then I would get the hdd or dvd drive checked or power cord/power supply.

F_Elz · Jun 23, 2005, 02:15 AM

I tried reparing it in Disk Utility, but it says "keys out of order". Does anyone know what that means? Seems Disk Utility cannot repair it. :|

Since EBCDIC · Jun 23, 2005, 05:57 AM

Disk Utility is just this side of worthless. DiskWarrior will fix the problem if it can be fixed. Tech Tool has a super-cool feature of allowing you to boot from a virtual drive which is way more amazing than it sounds here.

Get DiskWarrior. Once a week I boot from the CD and check all my drives. Makes all the difference in the world. Good luck.

To give you a bit more general advice, given what I've read here, I'd suggest that you do another backup and AppleCare it. They'll figure out what's wrong, and since you have a backup you can check off the "can we replace the hard drive" item. (I had two 80 GB hard drives die within three weeks of each other last winter. The wierdest thing. On a machine I'd had for three years already, so it was a known quantity.) Good luck.

PER3 · Jun 24, 2005, 02:31 PM

Originally Posted by seanc

The cracking sound isn't like a breaking glass sound is it?

The beaking glass sound means that you have a memory problem.

If it's not a breaking glass sound, then I would get the hdd or dvd drive checked or power cord/power supply.

I'm very curious to find out about how the sound of cracking glass relates to memory problems. If you're not kidding, it'd be appreciated if you could provide a few more details.

Amorya · Jun 25, 2005, 06:58 AM

Originally Posted by PER3

I'm very curious to find out about how the sound of cracking glass relates to memory problems. If you're not kidding, it'd be appreciated if you could provide a few more details.

It's a sound file played out of the computer's speakers on bootup, if the memory fails its tests. It's analogous to the old Sad Mac icon.

Amorya

Tsilou B. · Jun 25, 2005, 11:59 AM

Strange, my sister has the same problems on her iMac G3 since installing Tiger. I always help her to get the Mac running again, but a few days later the Mac displays the blinking question mark again.

NeilCharter · Jun 26, 2005, 03:08 AM

Tsilou,

It may not be Tiger causing the problem, but rather some issue with ram or the disk that was unveiled with the Tiger install.

Pull all the extra memory out first and se if the issue returns - the machine will run slow during that time but it will eliminate bad third party ram.

If the issue is still there, back up her data etc, wipe the drive, reformat etc and reinstall Tiger. Any bad blocks will be avoided with the re-format.

If the issue returns then there is either a drive failure or something up with the hardware.

JMII · Jul 6, 2005, 08:44 PM

I know this thread is a bit old but... I just went thru the same thing with a new dual G5 here at work. It would freeze or lockup at random, sometimes a Kernal Panic other times just a crash with no messages. Each time the only way to get it running again was pushing the power button on the front - no force quit, no Terminal, nothing would unfreeze it. Anyway this happend a few times over the last month, each time we guessed it was some software glitch. It just seemed so random and none of the other G5s in the office was having this problem even with the same software on it (standard suite of desktop publishing apps: Quark, Adobe Creative Suite 2, Suitcase, Microsoft Office and so on...)

Well just today it crashed again, but this time it would NOT reboot no matter what we did - we zapped P-RAM and did all the other tricks you could think of. Every time it started up off the hard drive it just shut down as if the power supply had failed - very odd

I've never seen a Mac do this, it was crazy!!!

I then booted it off the OSX Install CD and ran Disk Utility - sure enough the dreaded "Keys out of order" error that is UNfixable via Disk Utility. Oh sh

well before going any further I rebooted and ran the Hardware Test on the Install CD, sure enough the RAM in two slots failed. So this explained the Kernal Panics and random freezes from before, but other then erase and restore from backup tapes there seemed to be no other way to fix it.

So I decided to let Disk Warrior have a go at it. And it worked! Disk Warrior rebuilt the directory. The Mac still would not boot up, but atleast Disk Utility would see the volume now and let me do a repair. From there I was able to reinstall Tiger. After that it came back up just fine... praise the maker.

The moral to this story?
Step 1: run the hardware test and see if you have bad RAM. Do this first or everything else will just be a waste
Step 2: run Disk Warrior! Let it rebuild the directory
Step 3: reinstall the OS (you might not even need this step, but I did)
Step 4: problem solved

atleast in my case.

While this whole process takes awhile (about 2 hours) it sure beats a complete wipe and restore from backup, especially when your talking about a 160GB drive with hundreds of apps on it.