iMac G5 won't boot!

I have a PowerPC G5 iMac that is about 4 years old. It froze up yesterday (spinning beach ball, then no moving of the cursor) and made a few clicking sounds, and I had to force shut down.

I left it for a couple hours and tried to reboot, only to have it get stuck at the gray screen with the apple. I never saw the spinning wheel indicating that it was loading, and instead the fan kicked into high gear, indicating that it was actually frozen. Shut down and restarted 3 times to the same results.

At this point I googled on my husband's computer for possible solutions. I attempted to boot it up in safe mode, and had the same freeze/fan problem once I reached the gray apple screen. Same results for "single user mode". After both of these failed I got out my install CD and booted from there. Attempted to repair the disk and got an error: "the underlying task reported failure on exit". Restarted and tried again, same results. I decided to attempt to reinstall the OS, or at least do the "archive and install" option. However, once I got to the place where you choose your destination, there was no hard drive showing.

At this point I am thinking that my hard drive went bad, or something. Any advice as to what to do from here?

Removing hard disk is pretty easy in G5-based iMac. I think you should remove hard disk (or atleast data cable) and try boot from OS X CD/DVD disc. When you press C while booting the machine and with the disc in the drive, it should then attempt to boot from the disc. If it is unable to boot even from CD/DVD it could more than just the hard disk.

So my husband and I took apart the computer, and removed the hard drive. It was kind of difficult to get to, as it's one of the isight PPC G5 imacs, and not meant to really be got to.

Anyway, after removing the hard drive, I attempted to boot from the startup CD, and the screen stayed blank. So...it kind of seems to not be the hard drive, but I am at a complete loss as to what the problem is, unless I somehow messed something up while taking things apart.

With the HD out you should get a flashing ?. Insert the boot disc and hold down the C key or restart and hold down the C key.

I did that, and the screen stayed black. The light on the front came on, but nothing ever happened on the screen. Then I released the "c" key and the fan kicked up a few gears, so I turned the computer off again.

iMac G5 problems

Hi raesive - I realise it was a while ago, but did you ever solve your G5 boot issues?? I have EXACTLY the same problem and symptoms as you did, and just can't get round it! thanks, Nick