Dual 1.25 GHz problems..LONG! Sorry..
Hi everyone. I've been a member here for some time now, and love this forum. It's helped me out many a time. Please forgive this lengthy post, but I need some advice. Hopefully one or two of you might get though this...
My issue is this (regarding a possible Apple lemon policy). I bought a Dual 1.25 G$ the week after the G5s were announced, for the simple reason that I work in Pro Tools and OS9 a lot - i'm a record producer - and understood that this new dual was possibly going to be the last and perhaps the most powerful of the Macs that would still dual boot. Of course I use OSX most of the time anyhow, but this dualbootability was the added bonus for me.
I maxed the thing out with 2gb Kingston RAM (well it came with 512mb Apple ram - the additional was kingston). Also, I added 4x120GB ATA drives. I needed this particular Mac for the 4 PCI slots - I use 3 for my Pro Tools HD, plus another for an ATTO dual320 SCSI card.
So, upon opening the box, I powered it up, and all was fine until I tried booting into OS9. Nothing. I might add that at this time, only the additional ram and one add'l HD was installed, all by ClubMac.
I called Apple about this, and they, as I expected, told me to remove anything that had been added, i.e. the RAM and the extra drive, and try restoring the OS9 side of things from my install CD package. So I did, but every time the installer crashed and failed. Again I called Apple, and they said they would send me out a replacement CD (CD 1 of 4 of the OS9 restore set).
I waited 3 weeks 5 days for the replacement CD (shipped by Fedex Ground). Yes that's right. 26 days. And the original Apple tech told me I'd have it overnight or at worst in 2 days. I called them once it didn't show up - so they put a trace on it - and refused to send another one out until they could track it down. I had also explained that I was about to start using the computer for an album that was to start in a few days, but this didn't change anything. I was able to get round that issue - we have 4 G4s at the studio so that wasn't a problem.
26 days later the CD arrived in a package that was originally white, but was now black with footprints all over it. LOL! Anyhow, the installation worked and finally i was able to boot into OS9!! However, it crashed immediately and did so each time I tried to boot into OS9. This had by now all taken SO long, that my 30 day tech support was about to run out, so I decided to buy Applecare for the stricken Mac. I've got a lot of patience with Macs - this is my 10th - so I decided to get to the bottom of this once and for all as soon as that album was complete.
I got home and decided to reinstall Panther from scratch, and then restore OS9 as per before. It worked, but immediately crashed as before. I had removed all 3rd party addons, RAM, drives, PCI cards of course, but still this persisted in happening. I even tried installing on a drive on the other ATA bus, and that has been the most stable solution (in fact I'm writing this post from the same machine now). However, Panther (10.3.2) crashes or freezes at least once a day, and I don't even bother to try to use OS9 on this Mac. As you might imagine, I got round my Pro Tools problems by staying with my older G4 500mhz Sawtooth. That's working just fine, thank you.
Sorry for the long post, but I'm about at my wits end with this machine now. Does anyone have ANY other suggestions about how i might be able to get this beast to behave? I've done the permissions/disk repair stuff, and run every utility known to man (DiskWarrior, Norton, TT Pro) but they come up with either nothing or minor directory problems that DW always fixes. I'm not surprised there are directory problems considering this crashes/and or freezes up daily.
I'm using Panther on my G4 500, my G3 B&W 400, my TiBook800 - all without a hitch, crash or hiccup. So, why does this one give me so much crap?
Thanks
Neil
My issue is this (regarding a possible Apple lemon policy). I bought a Dual 1.25 G$ the week after the G5s were announced, for the simple reason that I work in Pro Tools and OS9 a lot - i'm a record producer - and understood that this new dual was possibly going to be the last and perhaps the most powerful of the Macs that would still dual boot. Of course I use OSX most of the time anyhow, but this dualbootability was the added bonus for me.
I maxed the thing out with 2gb Kingston RAM (well it came with 512mb Apple ram - the additional was kingston). Also, I added 4x120GB ATA drives. I needed this particular Mac for the 4 PCI slots - I use 3 for my Pro Tools HD, plus another for an ATTO dual320 SCSI card.
So, upon opening the box, I powered it up, and all was fine until I tried booting into OS9. Nothing. I might add that at this time, only the additional ram and one add'l HD was installed, all by ClubMac.
I called Apple about this, and they, as I expected, told me to remove anything that had been added, i.e. the RAM and the extra drive, and try restoring the OS9 side of things from my install CD package. So I did, but every time the installer crashed and failed. Again I called Apple, and they said they would send me out a replacement CD (CD 1 of 4 of the OS9 restore set).
I waited 3 weeks 5 days for the replacement CD (shipped by Fedex Ground). Yes that's right. 26 days. And the original Apple tech told me I'd have it overnight or at worst in 2 days. I called them once it didn't show up - so they put a trace on it - and refused to send another one out until they could track it down. I had also explained that I was about to start using the computer for an album that was to start in a few days, but this didn't change anything. I was able to get round that issue - we have 4 G4s at the studio so that wasn't a problem.
26 days later the CD arrived in a package that was originally white, but was now black with footprints all over it. LOL! Anyhow, the installation worked and finally i was able to boot into OS9!! However, it crashed immediately and did so each time I tried to boot into OS9. This had by now all taken SO long, that my 30 day tech support was about to run out, so I decided to buy Applecare for the stricken Mac. I've got a lot of patience with Macs - this is my 10th - so I decided to get to the bottom of this once and for all as soon as that album was complete.
I got home and decided to reinstall Panther from scratch, and then restore OS9 as per before. It worked, but immediately crashed as before. I had removed all 3rd party addons, RAM, drives, PCI cards of course, but still this persisted in happening. I even tried installing on a drive on the other ATA bus, and that has been the most stable solution (in fact I'm writing this post from the same machine now). However, Panther (10.3.2) crashes or freezes at least once a day, and I don't even bother to try to use OS9 on this Mac. As you might imagine, I got round my Pro Tools problems by staying with my older G4 500mhz Sawtooth. That's working just fine, thank you.
Sorry for the long post, but I'm about at my wits end with this machine now. Does anyone have ANY other suggestions about how i might be able to get this beast to behave? I've done the permissions/disk repair stuff, and run every utility known to man (DiskWarrior, Norton, TT Pro) but they come up with either nothing or minor directory problems that DW always fixes. I'm not surprised there are directory problems considering this crashes/and or freezes up daily.
I'm using Panther on my G4 500, my G3 B&W 400, my TiBook800 - all without a hitch, crash or hiccup. So, why does this one give me so much crap?
Thanks
Neil
Comments
wrong forum.
moving to the Genius Bar.
and i have a simple suggestion.
if you have similar (working) G4's at your office, have you tried using Carbon Copy Cloner to just make a perfect copy of a working machine over to your new machine? see if that works.
(CCC is a free download, can be found at www.versiontracker.com)
Sheesh..
if so, when you run it does it find anything?
also, when you boot into OS9, will it boot into safe mode, or does that crash as well?
does it boot with extensions off?
have you tried resetting the PRAM?
have you removed the original RAM and replaced it with the Kingston RAM that you purchased later?
if so, when you run it does it find anything?"
I haven't tried that since I got home. I think it froze up when I tried it when I first got the Mac.
"also, when you boot into OS9, will it boot into safe mode, or does that crash as well?"
It wont boot up in OS9 at all- blank screen...extension offs is the same.
"does it boot with extensions off?"
Nope.
"have you tried resetting the PRAM?"
Yes. In one of my to and fros with Apple I did that, plus I reset the PMU. Still the same..
"have you removed the original RAM and replaced it with the Kingston RAM that you purchased later?"
Actually, this was what I thought might have been the problem. I'm currently running without the original Apple RAM on the second installation on ATA bus 2, which as I said is the most stable, but it still either freezes completely, or I get the grey screen with the "you now need to reboot your computer" message in several languages.
Thanks for your input - much appreciated!
Neil
almost the exact same problems with it getting progressivly worse while i owned it. after about two weeks, it couldn't go more than a few hours without kernal panicking.
after another few days, it wasn't able to boot. (they ended up replacing the entire machine)
when you try to boot off the hardware test CD, what error does it give exactly?
Thanks for all your help Arcimedes.
Neil
let us know how it goes.