Power Mac G4

[thelostchinese]

Power Mac G4 boot issue

I've got a Power Mac G4 and it wont boot correctly. Whenever I boot it normally, it loads for a bit and a kernel panic comes up. I can, however, boot into "Safe Boot" and it loads fine and I can use it. Since it boots to Safe Boot, i've been told it's not a logic board issue. I've also re-installed tiger twice, so thats not an issue. It was running fine before with all of the hardware that's in it, so it shouldn't be bad RAM or anything. Does anyone have any other ideas?

 

[hughvane]

I'd recheck that RAM if I were you. Take it out and replace it firmly, swapping the modules about. Before you do that, you may care to try this Memtest OS X.

 

[thelostchinese]

I did check it. I took all of it out and tried it one stick at a time and each time it still came up with the kernel panic

 

[Mac SK]

What model G4 is it? Could be a firmware issue. Did you reformat the drive when you installed the OS.

 

[thelostchinese]

What model G4 is it? Could be a firmware issue. Did you reformat the drive when you installed the OS.

It's the one referred to as "Mirrored Drive Doors". I told it to do a clean install over the old data, and it did overwrite it. I did not, however, do a disk utility format.

Like I said, it loads Tiger but only in "Safe Boot" so when I tried to do a firmware update, it wouldn't do it properly from what I can tell. The download page says it will ask to reboot, but when I ran the script, it never did. So I tried to reboot it manually, and it did another kernel panic.

I did figure out after that, that it needed system updates, so I installed it. When THAT asked to reboot, it never got all the way shut down. I left it for 5 hours thinking that it was just configuring updates, but it just came up with a blue screen and a spinning cog for the whole time.

I don't know what else to try.

 

[dtravis7]

Being that old of a machine I am sure you do not have the CD's that came with the MDD? If you did I would say run the Apple HardWare test and see if that finds anything wrong. Do you know the exact specs of your MDD? CPU Speed for one? Dual or Single G4's? Will try and find a Apple Hardware test for that machine but need the exact specs.

 

[Mac SK]

Unless its a hardware issue buy chance...it really sounds like a firmware problem. Your going to have to reformat the drive and you need a full retail version of the OS your going to install.

 

[thelostchinese]

I popped the serial number into apple and it is a "PwrMac G4(Mirrored Drive Door 2003)" and it has the Model Number is M8570.

In the "About this Mac" window it read:
Mac OS X - Version 10.4.11
PROCESSOR: Dual 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 - 2MB L3 Cache per processor
MEMORY: 2GB DDR SDRAM

I Have a Tiger disc, would that have the new firmware on it? I used that and formatted the drive already. if not, do you think a leopard disc would have it? And would it be worth running leopard on it? I heard people have had some issues running Leopard on G4's.

 

[hughvane]

If the Tiger disk you have is the full retail version, then follow dtravis' advice and boot from it, then run Disk Utility > Verify Disk > Repair Disk (if necessary). And yes, it will have the correct firmware.

MacTracker http://mactracker.ca/ lists Leopard as the maximum OS. You have ample RAM, and the dual-1.25's will help, so I guess you could give it a try. Interestingly, MacTracker states there is no firmware update for the 2003 MDD G4.