G5 Starts Up Fine But Doesn't Start Monitor Consistently!

Hello all. I just purchased a new Mac Pro. My G5 has been problematic for a number of months now even under Leopard. I replaced the internal battery, have done PMU and zapped PRAM and nothing solved my problem. The problem has been: It takes me at least 2 pushes of the power button but sometimes 3 or more to get video on my 20" Cinema Display. This only happens at the start of the day.

Upon receiving the Mac Pro, I zeroed out the G5 hard drive in preparation for sale on eBay but I wanted to make sure that it would start consistently for the new owner. That is the only problem I've ever had with the G5. I then installed Tiger and all the associated upgrades.

I connected to a Samsung monitor. I was gone for the weekend, came home and G5 and monitor started up beautifully first time. Great, I thought. This morning, two fresh starts did not work. The computer boots up but the monitor does not come on. After one PRAM zap, up it came just fine. I reseated the two 512MB RAM sticks, pressed the PMU button once and and hoping for better things but I can't figure this out as the computer otherwise runs fine. I thought it might have been a pesky .KEXT file or something but a zeroing of the hard drive and installation of Tiger should have fixed that, true?

Anyway, I want to make sure the new owner will have a trouble-free computer.

Any suggestions on how I might fix this problem? This one has me stumped!

Thanks in advance!

SNazz123

Bump... Same problem

Have a look at this and see if your PowerMac is within the serial numbers:-

http://www.apple.com/support/powermac/powersupply/repairextension/

mine isnt

harryb2448 said:

Have a look at this and see if your PowerMac is within the serial numbers:-

http://www.apple.com/support/powermac/powersupply/repairextension/

Click to expand...

Thanks Harry, but my G5 was the original 2.0 GHz model so I'm not covered. I can't tell if this is a power supply problem, a video card problem or something else. I wonder: Does the Apple Genius bar people have a charge to look at a computer? I really don't want to pump several hundred dollars into this before I sell it on eBay.

Thanks,
SNazz123

problem with booting mac

I have another suggestion. I was having similar problems with my G4 dual 1.5 system after upgrading to Leopard. I pulled out my extra hard drives and extra cards I had installed and my system would boot up. I have since updated all the system updates. I am hoping this will help with the problem and haven't checked for new drivers on the various manufacturers' websites to see if that was the issue. I have a SATA card, TV tuner card, and USB/Firewire card that were potentially the culprit.

-Shaun

AI-MacDaddy said:

I have another suggestion. I was having similar problems with my G4 dual 1.5 system after upgrading to Leopard. I pulled out my extra hard drives and extra cards I had installed and my system would boot up. I have since updated all the system updates. I am hoping this will help with the problem and haven't checked for new drivers on the various manufacturers' websites to see if that was the issue. I have a SATA card, TV tuner card, and USB/Firewire card that were potentially the culprit.

-Shaun

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions Shaun. However, as it stands, I zeroed out the Seagate drive that shipped with the G5, installed Tiger and all the updates, including JAVA ones, and there are only three things connected: The AC power cord, natch, an ethernet cable and a monitor cable to the Samsung. All external FireWire drives are now connected to the new Mac Pro.

I just made an appointment with the Genius Bar for Tuesday. Perhaps they can check the power supply, graphics card, RAM. I've run diagnostics on the graphics card and RAM and all is "A-OK" based on the results. I'm just hoping that it doesn't need $500 worth of work when I may only get $700 for it on eBay or something.

Thanks Shaun,
Wayne

I took an old G5 Mac mini to an Apple Genius to have him look for it. I was upfront with him and told him it was a G4 and possibly out of warranty. I wasn't positive because I had just picked it up on eBay. He confirmed it was out of warranty but still helped me.
I didn't have a power adapter so I asked him if he could power it on and plug in a monitor for me. He did, it worked, and I left. He was really cool about it.
I would suggest making an appointment and see if they'll help you. What's the loss if he says no? A few $$ in gas and an hour or two of your day?

bryphotoguy said:

I took an old G5 Mac mini to an Apple Genius to have him look for it. I was upfront with him and told him it was a G4 and possibly out of warranty. I wasn't positive because I had just picked it up on eBay. He confirmed it was out of warranty but still helped me.
I didn't have a power adapter so I asked him if he could power it on and plug in a monitor for me. He did, it worked, and I left. He was really cool about it.
I would suggest making an appointment and see if they'll help you. What's the loss if he says no? A few $$ in gas and an hour or two of your day?

Click to expand...

Well, that's what I did bryphotoguy. I could not get the Apple Hardware Test to boot with the option key down and Apple has this software online but not for the G5! Anyway, the Genius bar guys zeroed in on the graphics card as fault, my guess too. We ran the Apple Hardware Test and the graphics card was pronounced "OK" but they felt there was a 95% there was something at fault with the graphics card anyway.

When I got home, I had a thought: When the G5 does boot up I can do restarts just fine. It made me think, could the card contacts, when warm, expand just enough to make contact better and, when cool, doesn't make good contact. With that in my head, I made sure the graphics card was seated well, just in case. The G5 started up first time. However, at the Apple Store, it didn't start the first time but then it started the second time. So that usually means it will continue to start for the day. I'm going to continue to test this at home for a week. If it doesn't start consistently, I'll have to spring for a $180 ATI Radeon 9600 PRO AGP card then put it up for sale on eBay.

Thanks.

SNazz123

Sorry the issue still isn't resolved but good to hear you got some genius help.
Let us know how it goes with a new card.

bryphotoguy said:

Sorry the issue still isn't resolved but good to hear you got some genius help.
Let us know how it goes with a new card.

Click to expand...

Well, I'm hoping I've got a solution now. ATI believes it is the card too. I explained that I didn't want to pay $180 on an AGP card just to turn around and sell the G5 on eBay. I had wondered about using a PCI card slot and that's what they suggested. So, for $116 delivered I'll be getting a Radeon 9200 Mac Edition PCI card. It'll be brand new for the new owner and should work great plus it has 64MB more VRAM. I'm hoping this nightmare will be over soon and I can get on with selling my G5. With the exception of this flaky card, this G5 has been rock solid Bryan! If I remember, I'll have to get back here and let you know if the new card is, indeed, the solution. Thanks for your help!

SNazz123

bryphotoguy said:

Sorry the issue still isn't resolved but good to hear you got some genius help.
Let us know how it goes with a new card.

Click to expand...

Hey Bryan. Just a followup. I replaced the flaky ATI AGP 9600 Pro with an ATI PCI-slot 9200 MacEdition and now the G5 starts every time so it was the flaky graphics card, indeed.

My PowerMac G5 is now on eBay, finally! Thanks for your help along the way!

SNazz123