Major problems with Tiger - Mac newbie too!

Hi,

This is my first ever post on here so I would just like to say a huge thanks in advance to anyone who will be able to help me

About a month ago I was running some standard updates on my G5, Tiger running Mac and restarted it so that the updates could be applied but when it came back on it would not boot into the OS. It does all the regular start up stuff but when it gets to the screen with the loading status bar on it gets all the way to the end to say it loaded but then wont start up into the OS and its been doing that ever since. I have left it to try to boot for literally hours at a time but with no joy.

I have tried to do a reinstall/repair on it but when I put my Tiger disc into the drive it does not recognise the disc when it is starting up and if I try to hold down the C button when restarting, the cd drive kicks in but after a few seconds tells me that the machine needs to be restarted and then goes on to do exactly the same thing.

Any advice would be really gratefully appreciated!

x

Welcome to Mac-Forums, mac_minx.

A couple of things you could try.

Reset the PRAM and NVRAM.

Mac OS X: Troubleshooting installation and software updates.

Or, if it doesn't work...

Start up into Safe Boot mode by holding down the Shift key, log in your account. Booting into Safe Boot mode cleans out some junk left over in the system. See if that works.

If not... Start up into Safe Boot mode by holding down the Shift key, log in your account. Go to the System Preferences -> Accounts pane, create a new user account and select it to be the automatic log in account from the drop-down menu. (See screenie below)

Restart. See if the problems persist in the new account.

I think your problem is simply some software conflict. Hard to tell what is causing it. It's either a piece of software installed for all users on your machine or it's a program that just runs in your usual account. The new user account will tell which is which.

I have tried all these things and nothing is working
It isn't even allowing me to boot into Safe mode - any other suggestions?
I did a hardware check on the system last night and everything was fine - it let me boot up the hardware check disc but when I tried to boot up my 10.4 disc it told me I had to restart the machine.

Any further help would be hugely appreciated, I just feel like I want to cry at the moment!

xx

Can anyone help

Ouch! When you try to boot into Safe Mode, what happens?
Did you zap the PRAM?
Can you boot into Single User mode? Start up holding down Option-S when you get to the scary looking unix screen type in:
/sbin/fsck -fy
Hit the Enter key.
Report back in!

Big thanks for replying to my post - when I try to boot into safemode it stays on the gray startup screen for a while and then goes onto the normal startup screen with the status bar and wont get past that.
I tried zapping the PRAM - it didnt seem to do anything though
I will try the single user mode as soon as I get home and let you know how I get on.

Thanks a million for your help! xx

I tried to boot into Single user mode, it got to the unix style screen and when I entered /sbin/fsck -fy it came up with more text and then stopped. I typed in restore and it came up with an error message saying root user not found.
Can anyone shed any further light? I am getting really frustrated with it now and just want to cry

Thanks folks xx

Sounds like your netinfo database is hosed. That is the thing in Tiger that keeps track of user accounts (among other things). That can be fixed with a system archive and install and maybe a few tweaks to reestablish your user account.
However, you have some sort of problem with your Tiger installation CD. Your Mac boots with the hardware check disk, so the problem is not the optical drive. Is your Tiger installer the gray one that came with the G5 or is it the black retail disk?

The Tiger disc is the black retail version. I have the original grey os x discs that came with my machine as well.

Its ok if I lose all data on there as I have most things backed up, I just really want my mac to work again

Are the gray disks for Panther, OS 10.3 or Tiger? Will they boot the G5?

The grey discs are just the original 0s x I think, they wont boot up, it just says the same thing as the Tiger disc, i.e restart your machine.

Sheesh, that is really odd. I can't understand why the Hardware test disk would boot this thing and the install CDs don't. How about plan B? Another Mac with a firewire cable and target disk mode?

is this simple to do? - it sounds like it is getting a little complicated now
Do you think it would be expensive to get it fixed by someone?

I really appreciate all your help btw xx

No idea what it is going to cost to fix, but you might want to start looking around. I wish I could figure out what is going wrong, but you have a couple of really odd things going on. Best of luck, let us know what happened!

ok, will start looking, thank you. A colleague of mine has just tried to boot up the cds in his macbook pro and none of the discs would boot at startup even though when in the OS they seem to appearing ok. Could it be the discs? surely its strange that none of them are working though?

Well none of the original equipment CDs that come with any other model are going to work. Those are the gray CDs, don't even bother! The black Tiger CD should have worked. The fact that your Hardware test CD boots means that the basic mechanics of the G5 are pretty much OK. The Tiger CD should have worked.