iMac Won't Boot Unless It's in Safe Mode

robrbnrobrbn
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
My iMac won't boot unless I boot it into safe boot. It won't even boot from the Leopard disc so that I can repair the disk and the permissions. Every time it starts up the screen would dim and then I get the message that I need to hold down the power button and restart the computer, which I believe is a kernel panic. I get this same message when I try to boot from the Leopard disc. I've tried repairing disk permissions while in safe boot and it fixed the permissions but still no luck when I tried a normal boot. I've tried replacing the RAM hoping it was faulty RAM as well as changing the slot the RAM was in and that didn't work either. How come it will boot in safe mode but not normally? I also ran Apple Hardware Test and it said everything appeared to be ok. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.



The iMac is a 17" Intel Core Duo, 1.83 Ghz with 1GB of RAM.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 1
    imacmadman22imacmadman22 Posts: 72member
    I'm guessing this Mac probably shipped with Tiger or Panther? if it did, you shoud try to boot from one of those disks first. I hope you've backed up your files too, because you should try reinstalling one of those versions of OS X. If you are successful booting from one of those disks, you should then be able to install Leopard from the desktop and it should be okay. When you install Leopard, you should probably do an "Archive and Install" http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1710A kernel panic looks something like this:







    Good Luck!
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