Help! G4 will not boot from internal drive

lexiplexip
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
PowerMac G4 Dual 533 w/1.5GB Ram OS 10.3.9 will not boot from an internal hard drive but will boot just fine from an external firewire drive. When this problem first began I would get the ?prohibited? sign at startup. Now I get the gray screen w/Apple logo and spinning gear. When I boot from an external drive the internal drive does mount and I can read and write files. This is what I?ve tried so far:



Ran Disk Utility

Ran Disk Warrrior

Ran Techtool Pro

Zap PRAM

Push PMU button (once)

Disconnect all peripherals

Reinstall OS 10.3 (archive and install)

Erase hard drive and install OS 10.3

Remove old internal hard drive and install new hard drive with new cable



Nothing has worked so far.



Thanks for any suggestions.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    went2whitecastlewent2whitecastle Posts: 1member
    I see you have 1.5 gigs of RAM. Try removing different sticks and re-booting. If you know which stick was the 'original', start with that lone stick. Usually a problem that makes no sense ends up being a RAM issue.



    Next I would install whichever version of X you like on one of your drives on another mac, however you choose, then putting the drive back into your Dual.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    drboardrboar Posts: 477member
    It could be a bad HD, they all die soner or later.



    Does the disk boot if you put in an external FW= bad internal IDE



    Does not boot in external FW cabinet= Bad HD or bad boot sector



    =>repartation to FAT32 and install DOS booting (in options) then change the partition to HFs and pick the option for PPC boot sector (This way you will have a fresh boot sector)
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