Crashed i-Mac G5

Hello, My family has an i-Mac G5 that recently crashed. Who ever was using it said that she was on i-tunes and it froze up meaning that the application was unresponsive and had to force quit it. She then turned the power off, left the computer for a while but when she went back on it and turned it on but all it does is stay on a white light up screen. Any advice on how to fix this?

The hard drive may have "kicked the bucket". One way to test is to try booting from a CD...you do have a OS CD/DVD to boot from...don't you?

If you don't have an OS CD/DVD to boot from...you need to buy one. Since if you do need to replace the hard drive...you will need an OS install CD/DVD to install the OS on the new HD.

Hope this helps,

- Nick

p.s. BTW...what is the processor speed on this iMac G5?...depending on the processor speed...this iMac may be suffering from another possible problem.

I've tried to use the disk but it didn't work. I don't know what the processor speed is and have no idea where to figure this out other than on the computer. I don't have a paper manual. Just out of curiosity, why did this happen? The computer wasn't very old.

Hettbone said:

I've tried to use the disk but it didn't work. I don't know what the processor speed is and have no idea where to figure this out other than on the computer. I don't have a paper manual. Just out of curiosity, why did this happen? The computer wasn't very old.

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"Why did this happen?"...everything breaks eventually...EVERYTHING! If it was your hard drive...hopefully you had your important files backed up.

By the way...your computer is a little bit old. The last 17" iMac G5 was discontinued in 2006...that's 4 years. 4 years in the computer world is a lot older than it's in the human world! Kind of like "dog years" vs. "human years"!

I would like to help further...but you haven't given me much to work with in your response.

- Nick

Oh wait! Now I just turned it on and instead of a white screen, it has a picture of a file with an image alternating between a macintosh face and a question mark. The fan is also blowing really loudly and fast. Does this mean the hard drive died?

Hettbone said:

Now I just turned it on and instead of a white screen, it has a picture of a file with an image alternating between a macintosh face and a question mark.

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Given the problem you mentioned above...this could be a further indication that your iMac's hard drive has failed.

- Nick

I'm reasonably confident that any good Mac shop will be able to repair this (as pigoo indicates, it's probably the hard drive) for you, but actually the iMac G5 was discontinued at the end of 2005, so your machine is at least five years old and that's about the average lifespan of home computers.

This is not to say your Mac won't still be useful (once repaired) for a long while to come, just that on average, most people reach the point where they'd rather invest in a new(er) model than spend money on the old one at about the five-or-six year mark.

So you're about due to be considering your next Mac. But again, if the repair turns out to be a modest expense (ie let's say under $300), I'd invest in that.

But if you're not already doing so, this is a good time to also invest in a good backup solution.

chas_m said:

...actually the iMac G5 was discontinued at the end of 2005,

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Not sure if we are getting info from different locations...Everymac.com says January, 2006:

iMac G5/1.9 17-Inch @ EveryMac.com

But realistically...we're both only talking a difference of weeks or a couple months...which really isn't important.

- Nick

I see, this is useful information. Thanks for your help!