iMac won't start, stuck on gray screen troubleshooting and options

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Ok I am new to this so I basically have two questions.

1.). I turned my computer off last night. When I turned it on this morning it would only go to the loading screen with the apple and loading circle and it will stay there for about two minutes and the computer will shut off. It's been doing that all day. I called apple and they told me it was a hardware issue and to bring it in. Does anyone know what this is? Is it the end of my computer? Are the repairs going to be very expensive ( Aka more than the price of a new computer?)

2.) if this is the end of my computer, if I get a Mac mini is there anyway to use my iMac as a display?


Computer Info: iMac, g5 late 2006, 17 inch, 1GB ram, intel core 2 duo. It came with tiger and it's been upgrade to leopard. I was going to upgrade to snow leopard and lion this weekend, but... The hard drive and memory are close to full.
Please help if you can. Thanks you guys :)
 

chscag

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You were not going to upgrade to Snow Leopard or Lion anyway because a G5 is a PPC machine and PPC machines can not run SL or Lion.

I'm not all that familiar with the G5 but it does sound like some sort of hardware error. Many of our members here have a G5 or had one and should be able to provide you with an answer. So hang on. And welcome to the Mac Forums.

Edit: Are you sure you have a G5 and not an early Intel iMac? The last G5 machines were made in late 2005.
 
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Your right i think it's just a plain old 2006 iMac. I don't know why I thought G5. I would love some help, thank you so much :)
 

chscag

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OK, that's what I thought. It does sound like a hardware error and my feeling is it's your hard drive which died. Let's try this:

Get out your original install DVD (probably Tiger 10.4) and try to boot the machine with it. Insert the DVD and hold down your OPTION key as soon as you hear the chime. Keep pressing it until you see the Apple and spinning circle. (it may take a while) If you can get it to boot that way, skip past the install stuff and go to the top menu. Select Utilities, Disk Utility, and do a verify and repair. Let us know the results.
 
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Ok I am new to this so I basically have two questions.

1.). I turned my computer off last night. When I turned it on this morning it would only go to the loading screen with the apple and loading circle and it will stay there for about two minutes and the computer will shut off.

Generally, if a computer shuts itself entirely off, that means that there is a problem with the power supply or maybe a cold solder joint around the power supply.

In addition, if your Mac gets stuck at the gray screen on startup, that also usually signifies a hardware problem, often an external hard drive that is problematic, or failed RAM.

See:
Mac OS X 10.5 Help: If you see a gray screen at startup
 
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OK, that's what I thought. It does sound like a hardware error and my feeling is it's your hard drive which died. Let's try this:

Get out your original install DVD (probably Tiger 10.4) and try to boot the machine with it. Insert the DVD and hold down your OPTION key as soon as you hear the chime. Keep pressing it until you see the Apple and spinning circle. (it may take a while) If you can get it to boot that way, skip past the install stuff and go to the top menu. Select Utilities, Disk Utility, and do a verify and repair. Let us know the results.

Ok so this morning I did what you said. Under disk utility I have the following:
232.9 GB WDC WD2500JS-40T...
Macintosh HD
Disk0s3
Then blah blah about my DVD-RW

So I selected verify disk on the 232.9... Thing
It said that there is an invalid sibling link, the volume needs to be repaired, it said this right before it was able to mount the disk so I suppose it did not get to mount?... It also says the underlying task reported failure on exit.
I also verified the macintosh hd (just because I am not sure what I'm doing an I figured that could be helpful, and it said the same thing. The disk0s3 was fine and it said that volume passed repair.

Sigh..... Thank you so much everyone. You guys are fantastic :).
 
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Ok everyone. I am extra confused now. After I put in my original startup disk and did the verify on my HD when I restarted the computer it went right back to normal. It took a while to boot, but it still went back. :/ what the **** is going on. In haven't tried to restart it again to see if this is back to "normal". Just thought that was an important update.
 
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When I say back to normal I mean it went to the log in screen and I am logged in instead of stuck at the gray screen
 

chscag

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Sounds like you had a bit of good luck - but don't press it. :) Immediately make a complete backup of that hard drive before doing anything else. And keep us posted.
 
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Ok everyone. I am extra confused now. After I put in my original startup disk and did the verify on my HD when I restarted the computer it went right back to normal.

Sounds as if you have a problem that is, for now, intermittent. A cold solder joint around the power supply will sometimes be like that. It may get worse when your Mac comes up to full operating temperature, or, paradoxically, it may only tend to be a problem when your Mac is cold.

Cold solder joint problems usually crop up during the summer due to overheating and lots of temperature cycling.
 

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