G4 - Won't boot - No startup volumes available

[whitts]

HELP ......

I work in IT but am new to Mac's and have been asked buy a friend to look at there Mac (G4) ..... and am now in need off advice.

System has been working for years but crashed last week and now will not boot ..... grey screen with the flashing question mark. I have been looking around and tired a reset of the PRAM but that has made no difference.

Think I have found the problem .... when holding down the option key on bootup I get into the startup manager but it is completely blank .... no cd or hard drive .... nothing to boot from.

Any ideas of what I can do next ????

Thanks

 

[blackmac11]

Think I have found the problem .... when holding down the option key on bootup I get into the startup manager but it is completely blank .... no cd or hard drive .... nothing to boot from.

Do you mean that they do not have the original install disks? doesn't really matter though, it sounds like the hard drive has bit the dust, it is certainly old enough...

 

[whitts]

I have the restore cd's but cannot boot from them as the mac is not seeing anything to boot from .... cd drive / hardrive all I see is a blue screen. Not sure if it is the hard drive as system cannot see any ide devices ???

Take it I should be able to see the hard drive and cd / dvd drive in the startup manager ???? as all i see is a blue screen with a rescan button and a right arrow button to click on..

 

[blackmac11]

wow, that sounds odd... The hard drive is dead, that is for sure, but now it sounds like there are system problems too. You should be able to boot from the install disk no problem. Did they have a backup of the hard drive? If they did you could try just wiping everything and starting with a clean slate. Or take it to an apple store and see if they can shed some light on it.

But maybe he could just buy a new computer rather than pay repair costs. It is a minimum of 6 years old and isn't really worth going through all of that trouble for...

 

[whitts]

Thanks for you advice

No backups at all and you guessed it .... data on the disk is very important. How can get this data off ?????

Still baffled to why I am not seeing nothing in the startup manager as none of the cd's I have will boot, they just eject after 20 seconds ????

 

[blackmac11]

There is a program that could help. Im not entirely sure how this works, but I think you need a external hard drive and another mac to use this:

Filesalvage

You can download a free trial of it to determine wether or not the info can actually be recovered. Perhaps it will work, fingers crossed

 

[whitts]

Any other ideas as I'm assuming it must be a hardware error of some description as don't understand why I cannot see anything in the startup manager ...... if it was a disk problem then I would still assume that I should see the cd / dvd drive as they look as if they are on different ide channels ???

Could I use the firewire target option to see if I could see the drive on another mac ????

 

[chas_m]

Yes, you could use FW target mode to see if the data on the drive is intact and copyable.

As to why you're not seeing any startup devices when starting up from "option," my guess is either your disks are too old now to start up the Mac (shouldn't be but could be) or the optical drive is also having an issue. Have you tried a retail OS X disc, and have you waited a minute or so for it to be seen and recognised before giving up?

 

[whitts]

Right .... final update ..... I promise

Took another look and tried to boot in target mode and that just powered the mac off, looked this up and seem to point to the fact that it cannot see the disk ..... but when booting to the firmware I noticed that the date was set to 1904 .... seems like we have a duff battery.

Question is ..... would this stop the mac from booting ????? I am going to order a new battery as it's only a few pounds.

Also once I have replaced the battery how do I set the date and time & fingers crossed the boot order

Thanks for all your help

 

[Jamie-Jamie]

Yes! A dead battery will prevent some Macintoshes from booting. Can you say what model of G4 it is? Here are a few ways to ID them!

"Yikes!" is dark slate gray and has a PCI video card and no slot for Airport.

"Sawtooth" is the same dark gray and has AGP video and an Airport slot.

"Digital Audio" is the same dark gray color, but its expansion slots will be on the UPPER HALF of the case when you look at the rear.

"Quicksilver" is light gray with two pill-shaped slots on the front and a big obvious speaker that many people mistake for a power button.

"Mirrored Drive Doors" is obvious. It has a chrome plate on the front where the twin optical drives sit. It has four air holes in the bottom.

 

[whitts]

Sounds like the Mirrored Drive doors model .....

I will order a battery tonight, will the system prompt for a new date and time once this has been replaced or will I have to edit this in a setting somewhere ????

 

[Jamie-Jamie]

You can do it by clicking the time on the menubar and have it set the time off the webs.

 

[whitts]

Help ..... replaced the battery but still no joy .... and running out of ideas ???

I boot the mac to a firmware prompt and it displays the following :

Date & time is 00:19:37 01/01/1904 .... Can I change this from the firmware prompt ????

System is still not booting and just getting a blank screen when I try and select startup volumes

Anyone got any ideas ????

Cheers

 

[njharrison1979]

This is the problem i was having I restarted system had install disk in drive, holding down c but it ejected the disc after the same amount of time. I found if you put the disc in when you see the question mark whilst holding down the c it booted. Then I was able to access disc utility. My hard drive wasnt showing up in that either, I restarted and the mac managed to pic up the HD. I have run time machine and backed things up now in case the problem comes back.

When the install disc starts dont click on continue. You can access the menus at the top to get to disc utilities etc.

 

[Rottie]

Help ..... replaced the battery but still no joy .... and running out of ideas ???

I boot the mac to a firmware prompt and it displays the following :

Date & time is 00:19:37 01/01/1904 .... Can I change this from the firmware prompt ????

System is still not booting and just getting a blank screen when I try and select startup volumes

Anyone got any ideas ????

Cheers

Hi there,

Sorry to state the obvious, but do you happen to have an old IDE optical drive knocking around, which you could try in the Mac, to see whether the existing drive is faulty, or whether the problem lies elsewhere, like the motherboards IDE channels.

Hope this info helps.

 

[whitts]

Wondering if this is a faulty hard drive as cannot boot in target mode (just shuts down) and also cannot see the disk on another mac when attaching the disk to a ide to usb cable.

Can I use any other IDE drive in this mac eg one from a PC ????

 

[Rottie]

Wondering if this is a faulty hard drive as cannot boot in target mode (just shuts down) and also cannot see the disk on another mac when attaching the disk to a ide to usb cable.

Can I use any other IDE drive in this mac eg one from a PC ????

Hi again,
Yes, you should be okay using any ATA66 or ATA100 drive.
Just be sure to set the jumper on the drive to master, not CS (cable select) and you should be okay from there.

Hope this info helps.

 

[harryb2448]

You have replaced the PRAM battery with a good brand new battery? Now try zapping the PRAM. Boot and hold down the Command, Option, P and R keys all together immediately after the chime and keep held down until the chime repeats for the thrid time and see if you can get a boot.

 

[mf666]

Often the DVD will not appear until you click the curved arrow to rescan the bus. Regarding replacing the hard drive (if you haven't tested it in Disk Utility while booted to the DVD, don't replace it!!!), there are two ATA buses: one is ATA 100, the other is ATA66. USE 80-conductor cable for BOTH buses. Put the startup drive on the ATA100 bus (near the rear of the case). For the ATA-100 bus, DO NOT SET THE JUMPERS FOR MASTER /SLAVE!!! Always set jumpers (whether for one or two drives) on an ATA-100 bus to CS (cable select). ALWAYS!!! This applies to all computers, Mac or PC. For a PowerMac G4 MDD, you can also set the ATA-66 bus drives to CS. I have four internal hard drives in a PMG4 MDD and it works great with all drives set to CS. If I set any to slave / master, odd things happen including not being seen by the logic board at all.