Power mac boot problems

Hi there, I just recently bought a G5 ('04) and it only boots in safe mode. Now i spent all night looking for similar issues to no avail. If I let it try to boot normally, it will freeze in the gray screen. I've tried booting from the install cd but it freezes in the blue screen. I also tried booting from the hardware cd which worked and I tested the system (extended test) which everything passed, but still no luck with regular booting. I'm losing my mind, I tried everything i could think of including repair and erasing the hard drives and still nothing. Any clue if it may be a hardware issue?

Definitely a hardware issue, if you have tried erasing etc like you said the most common issue will be the graphics card making it boot into safe mode.

- Simon

the hardware test said it passed, do you think it could pass the test and still be faulty?

Could be a problem it does not look for, also could be a HD fault, if you have or can source a spare HD for it try using that instead see if it clears the problem.

- Simon

i'll disconnect my main HD and see if i can boot using my back up

If you cannot boot from any of your CD's (and these are the appropriate CD's for your computer)...then you definitely have a hardware issue.

If you were able to successfully boot from a CD previously...then your optical drive & boot CD are ok. FYI...you can successfully boot your computer from a CD with a bad hard drive...so swapping hard drives most likely won't help.

If you now cannot boot from the CD...I would assume that the optical drive is still ok (since you were able to boot from a CD before)...so as far as hardware issues...that leaves:

- bad video card
- bad ram
- bad logic board
- maybe a dead PRAM battery (long-shot)

From a DIY standpoint...unless you have spare known good parts...there's really no way to troubleshoot further.

HTH,

- Nick

Keep us updated

- Simon