Can only boot into Safe Mode

Posted in the wrong forum. D'oh

I've got an iMac PowerPC G3 Blueberry, 400 Mhz Slot loading machine running OS 10.3. At boot I seem to be stuck at the white loading screen. It freezes and does nothing. If I reboot and use the Shift Key I can boot into Safe Mode without any issues. This machine was given to me about 4 years ago, and I assume the person who previously owned it used it for several years prior.

Has the hard drive gone dead? Reinstalling the OS failed to solve the issue, by the way.

Disk Repair indicated no problems with the drive. Am running repairing permissions and will see where this takes me.

If you can boot to safe mode, the hard drive is probably OK. Have you installed any software or drivers lately? Any upgrades? New applications?

Have anything attached to the G3 that you didn't have before?

Regards.

Haven't installed any new hardware or software. I was originally using the mouse that came with the computer but am now using a regular microsoft mouse because I can't find the original. I wouldn't think the Mac would care on what brand of mice used.

OK. Even though Disk Utility indicated the hard drive didn't need to be repaired, that does not necessarily mean it's alright. Make a backup of all your data as soon as you can - backup from Safe Mode. (Just in case - doesn't mean the drive is bad.)

Normally when you can boot up in Safe mode but not otherwise, it usually indicates a software problem or driver corruption of some sort. But if you haven't made any changes or added hardware, that doesn't leave much.

Does the G3 boot OK from the install CD? I guess you ran diagnostics using your install recovery CD?

Regards.

Ran Disk Utility which found no problems, and I would use my recovery CD but I wasn't given one for OSX. The machine does boot okay from the install CD.

I'm ready to grab a different drive and see what difference it makes. Could this be a problem with the memory?

I'm ready to grab a different drive and see what difference it makes. Could this be a problem with the memory?

Click to expand...

Swapping out the hard drive is a good idea for testing. And yes, defective or flaky memory modules can cause some unusual things to happen. If you have some spare memory you might try that also.

Regards.