Mac OS 10.5.8 unresponsive-black screen, no power light

[botherboard]

Hello guys;

I'm new to the forum, and was hoping someone might might know the reason why my iMac met its untimely demise. It's been a long and painful death for it, too. At this point, it doesn't boot, doesn't even turn on after pushing the power button. I must say that I know next to nothing about hardware, and not really computer-savvy, in terms that I can't code my way out of a wet paper bag, so please bear with me. I used to be a (mostly) print designer and know my software (Adobe CS3, etc.) and that's about it.

Alright. It's an iMac, I think, G5, runs (or ran) OS 10.5.8, it has 2 Gb of RAM and I don't remember how many Gb HD, HD wasn't even close to full. I can't check the stats because the "parrot is no more, it's expired, it's gone to meet its maker".

I bought this Mac in 2008 used, almost new, previous owners used it as an office computer and wiped and re-installed the system for me. It became sluggish almost immediately, as soon as I started doing actual work projects in Adobe Illustrator and InDesign on in, but it was still fast when I surfed the internet. Then it got worse.

It started getting very slow, although RAM seemed to be only halfway used. Hard drive until the day of iMac's death was not even halfway full, as well. It started having strange symptoms, like the screen that goes black-changing power outlet seemed to help, and so did re-setting PRAM, PRAM reset seemed to help the lagging, but only temporarily.

Over the years it became unbearable to work on. I could see a rainbow wheel of death more than I could see my work. I was only able to check my e-mail on it this year, and even that barely. It started to freeze and crash applications like Safari and Firefox. Safari crashed ALL the bloody TIME. I even got a 'free memory' application, but RAM did not seem to be full, and it only helped a little.

Last week all I could do was boot it, open Utilities or Activity Monitor, and then it froze for good and I had to force a restart. After a few attempts to boot it back up, it started freezing on a blue screen, each time, than-on grey screen.

I managed to boot it up once in Safe Mode, and managed to go into Disk Utility and repair permissions. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough to shut it down after that for the night, hoping to save my files "later". Needless to say, pictures of my art, digital work, even family pictures are lost now because the machine never booted again.
Before it died completely, I tried to save it. I googled some tips online, this is what I've done:

Reset PRAM-tried to reboot=blue screen
Reset SMU-tried to reboot=blue screen
Checked the file system with a file system checker (fsck command thingy). received response that there was found an error, and error was corrected, received response that my HD now was okay.
Tried to reboot=blue screen
Reset NVRAM, whatever it is.
Reset Open Firmware, whatever it is.
Tried to reboot =blue screen.

Checked the power outlet, unplugged-plugged in, of course. Blue screen as above.

None of this helped. Yesterday tried to boot it again, and lo and behold, it was completely dead, no response, no power light, no sounds, no breathing

We live in the Middle-Of-Frigging-Nowhere, Arkansas, we have no Apple Geniuses or Apple stores and no transportation to get to one, plus I'm disabled and was doing small projects and editing my artwork on it, listening to music, downloading family photos from my camera-camera's only compatible with this **** Mac; but now everything is gone and we can not afford a new computer. Like, at all. :-( It really, really sucks jingle balls bells

If anyone has any ideas or clues, I would really appreaciate them.

Thank you very much for reading it all;

Maria

 

[chscag]

Welcome to the Mac Forums Maria.

You certainly provided us with plenty of information regarding your iMac and the steps you've taken to trouble shoot it. I'm not sure which model iMac you have, but if you say you purchased it in 2008 and it was used, it could either be a PPC model (G5) or an Intel model. The Intel iMacs were first introduced in early 2006 with the last PPC model iMac produced in 2005.

From your description of the problem - slow downs, freezing, etc, - points to a dying hard drive. You said you ran FSCK on the hard drive and it was repaired but that really only refers to the file and folder system. If the hard drive has a mechanical or electronic defect, FSCK will not detect it. Of course other things could also cause the slowdowns and freezing such as a bad GPU or logic board and even a bad power supply.

To be honest, with a machine that old, it just isn't worth spending any real sum of money on it to do repairs. Unless you can trouble shoot and do repairs yourself, it's best to try and come up with a newer machine. As for your data, if the hard drive has failed and you have no backups, all your photos and other documents could be gone forever. The cost to remove data from a dead or failed hard drive is ridiculously expensive. Of course if the hard drive is OK and is not the problem, then the data can be easily removed and saved elsewhere.

Sorry I don't have any better news for you. Perhaps some of our other members will have some suggestions and or ideas, so stay tuned.

 

[johnodd4]

I have a lot of bad news if it's a g5 iMac.

G5 iMacs where famous for the power supply failure issue the capacitors on the power supply basically explode and you have to replace the power supply a new one would run you $700.00 that is if you can find one and do to the machines age and the fact that powerpc macintoshes are no longer used by apple you would be better to get a newer machine.

The other issue they where also known for is the capacitors going out on the main board as well.

How do you tell.

Simple plug in the machine and place your ear right on the case where the apple logo is at you should here what sounds like buzzing or arcing if you do the power supply is gone.

and don't worry the case is plastic and doesn't generate electricity so you won't get shocked.

 

[chas_m]

Dear Johnodd4: thank you, much improved.

 

[johnodd4]

thank you autocorrect being fixed is not making my life a living **** anymore

 

[toMACsh]

Dear Johnodd4: thank you, much improved.

+1

thank you autocorrect being fixed is not making my life a living **** anymore

So why the regression?

What you described is sort of the reverse when trying to start an unresponsive automobile. If you hear a noise, that's the starter. If you don't, you need a new one. But your statement is a little confusing. "You should hear..." "If you do the power supply is gone."

So do you mean that if the power supply is good, you will not hear the sound?

 

[botherboard]

We managed to get it up in Safe Mode again

Hi everyone and thank you so much for answering!

Today me and my husband decided to connect it to a different power supply, different socket in the house we found altogether. It now goes to the blue screen with a little arrow in the upper left corner on a regular boot. I managed to get it up into a Safe Mode now, what a Christmas miracle it has been. We tried to burn DVDs with my artwork but whatever the reason they don't match my drive and get ejected, computer doesn't recognize them, if they need a firmware/drive update I can't do it because Safari crashes in the Safe Mode (it crashes anyway).

I would really, really appreciate if you guys know what I can do right now while it's in the Safe Mode to at least extend its life enough so we can buy another memory stick or come up with something else to save some files. We fully understand that we probably cannot save the machine itself; we said good-bye to it, ultimately. Meaning, is there anything else besides repairing disk permissions that I can do now that I have it running at leaset somehow? I don't think even Safe Mode is going to last long, it can die any minute.

Thank you once again;
Maria

 

[pm-r]

Hmmm…??? No replies since this afternoon??? Strange.

Anyway if it's not too late, get as much of your data saved to whatever you have available, any Flash drives, hard drives or even other Macs you might have available while it's booted.Or maybe even "share" your backup needs over the 'net if you can or have such an option.

And forget CDs and DVDs, they won't work for any burning while booted in Safe Boot Mode.

 

[botherboard]

We are working on it!

Thank you, yes, it's almost 2 A.M., spent the whole day with one memory stick loading and unloading zipped files to a PC . I will not see these files for a long time because AI and PSD extensions don't like changing systems, but at least we got something done. If there is anything I can repair besides permissions while the thing is running, please let me know.

Thanks