(Sorry for the long title, trying to make it descriptive to help future searchers on this topic.)
Background: I’ve been having problems with the RAM in my PowerMac G5 Quad pretty much ever since I got it:
- When it Rains… 2006-12-15
- More RAM Problems 2006-12-10
- RAM Install, Take 3 2005-12-08
- Arrival 2005-12-06
- OWC’s RMA Policies 2005-12-01
- Setting up the Quad 2005-11-30
The symptoms are generally the same. The machine starts to boot, the screen stays black, and the fans come on full blast. Last night I experienced this again.
I’d just put in new RAM earlier in the week and I noticed something a little odd on the first boot after adding the RAM in. Before going to the gray Apple screen, I got the little “folder with a question mark” briefly, then on to the gray Apple screen. It seemed like it was recognizing the new RAM, then going on and booting up.
On a hunch this morning, I removed only half of the RAM I’d installed and tried again. Sure enough, I saw the same little “folder with a question mark” briefly, then on to the gray Apple screen and a successful boot.
Now that I had a pattern, I thought the OWC tech guys might know what was going on. Sure enough, I gave them a call and explained the situation to Andy. As I’ve come to expect from OWC, he listened patiently as I explained the situation, asked a few questions and had a potential solution for me: reset the NVRAM (non volitile RAM).
Note: be sure to have all of your RAM installed before you do this.
Here is how to do it (from OWC):
To boot into Open Firmware, shut down your Mac, then start it up while holding down the Command, Option, O and F keys. At the prompt, enter the following commands (you may want to write them down on a piece of paper before beginning this process), pressing the return key after each:
reset-nvram
set-defaults
reset-allAfter which your Mac will restart.
After doing this, the Mac started right up. No “folder with a question mark”, no tornado effect from the fans, just a happy boot.
I hope, hope, hope this solves my RAM problems going forward.
UPDATE: Another tip I received was to unplug FireWire devices before running security updates, etc.
Have you had the video card checked? I have been Googling a similar problem and found this (http://macosx.com/te[...]em/8664.html) article. If you read the last comment, you will see that the video card ended up being the cause.
Those symptoms don’t match mine.
Yep, fixed my problem with an older dual Xeon Mac G5 as well, right after we’d installed more RAM (Went from 4 256 MB to 4 256 MB + 2 512 MB).
Thanks for the post, Alex. 😀
hi
thanks for the post,
i have the same probs with my powermac g5 dp 2,0 ghz , 1gb ram and 160gb hd, 9600.
I hear loud fan noises, its starts up, and i hear the chime noise. And i see a folder with a question mark.
I will soon try what is mentioned above.
Does anybody have any other tips?
thanks
chris
On my G5 dual 2.3GHz I also had the question mark folder flash up briefly and fans attempting liftoff. I searched for a solution (and was unable to find anything related to ‘loud fans’ on the Apple support site) until I found this page. After trying the above tip, all was well!
Much obliged!
Some of my symptoms are the same, I get the chime, then the grey apple screen but nothing after that, it just stays the same. I tried the Open Firmware reset, but after I enter the ‘reset-all’ command, the machine doesn’t restart like it’s supposed to.
I’m using a G5 dual 2.0 2gig Ram.
any help or advice would be invaluable to me!
thanks
Andy
andy,
as soon as you turn on your machine and you here the chime, hold down command S, this will take to the terminal.
then type:
/sbin/fsck -fy
If it tells you ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****, type the above again, until it says:
** The volume (name_of_volume) appears to be OK *** (where name is probably Macintosh_HD)
When that is done, type reboot and you should be gold.
I have had your issue and this has generally solved the boot up freeze. my problem at the moment is that i am again have the same problem except i cant access terminal mode. it seems to freeze on the grey screen and go into fail safe mode (when fans go crazy).
does anyone have any ideas??
crinx
Following these steps fixed my G5 Power Mac.
Thanks for posting this info.
Perfect!
I have been having this problem on my G5 for about 6 months now. I called apple help before and all the stuff they had me do, did nothing. This fixed it after one try.
THANK YOU!
Chris
Alex,
I was having a very similar problem with my Powermac G5 dual 2.7gHz … this is a problem that’s been plaguing me for months, actually, so much so I took the computer to Tekserve and had them fix it up. They set I had a bad RAM set, and gave it back to me, and it ran fine for about 2 weeks… but this morning I had the same exact problem you describe.
I ran the procedure you describe, and now I do get the blue log-in screen (whereas before it went black after the white apple screen), but now neither of the users are coming up…
It’s also worth noting that I never got the folder with the question mark.
Anyways, I will try again and perhaps everything will work out, but I was wondering if you had any futher troubleshooting suggestions?
Thank you,
James
These symptons are very similar to my computer´s disease. Reaches the grey apple-screen in start-up. Then the fans gradually spins faster and faster. I was reading this thread …
http://forums.macosx[...]t-67489.html
… were several others also experience sudden death. Mine was/is a G5 2.3 2GB RAM. Was running perfect for two years and four months with the same RAM and videocards. All of the sudden itcrashed on me. I have tried everything metioned here and on the link above.
I have no problems in reaching the open firmware. But I can’t start-up in single-user-mode (cmd+s). Here it freezes after “DART enabled” … and the fans gradually spins faster. Except for one time–I could start up in single-user-mode, run the “/sbin/fsck -fy” and then the computer started perfectly. In ran a few system updates and ranfor a couple of hours. Then I tried restarting and I lost the patient again. Haven’t been able to awaken the dead … yet …
Just happened across this thread and thought the following may be useful to others and reflects some of the experiences with machines dropped off with us……
Fans on ‘high’….. the G5 is full of temperature sensors that are monitored in software, which fan and how fast it turns happens due to sensor feedback…..i.e. if an area gets hot the fan(s) speeds up.
However, if the Op Sys doesn’t load correctly within a set period of time, the ‘fail-safe’ condition is to turn the fans on hard.
This is clearly demonstrated with the Apple Hardware Diagnostics CD / DVD which being a ‘bare-bones’ only system has the fans running like a wind tunnel as soon as you boot from the disc.
Things to do / check before wielding screwdrivers….. ( remove all peripheral kit except KBd & Mouse first)
1) Repair your disc permissions via Disc Utility
2) Reset Parameter RAM ( command-option P R ) on startup until U hear the chimes 3 times
3) Reset NVRAM in Open Firmware ( Command- Option O F ) on Startup. At the (white) command line screen, enter as per above post:-
reset-nvram and hit return
set-defaults and hit return
reset-all and hit return ( machine now boots)
4) Run Unix maintenance routines if you’re not in the habit of leaving the Mac turned on 24 hrs a day…..
Start the Terminal Utility (utilities folder)….
At the cursor type:-
sudo periodic daily hit return and WAIT for cursor
sudo periodic weekly as above
sudo periodic monthly as above
Quit Terminal.
5) CLEAN your machine! The examples we get here are often choked with dust which causes significant overheating / over-temperature readings.
If you have access to compressed air, take the machine outside ( you don’t want dust all over the house), and the best way is to blow the muck out (machine OFF of course) with a pressure of about 20 psi. ( Air cans are ‘ok-ish’ but pricey, we use a small compressor).
Pay attention to the Graphics card heatsink and HDD temp sensor area. Dirt build-up here can be significant and cause problems.
Pull out the main CPU fan(s) and get a good jet of air through the CPU heatsink fins. (put fan back!).
Blow a good jet around /thru’ the two Two fans at the rear of the machine. These get filthy.
If you can, try to get a good jet of air thru’ the main PSU which is under the bottom plate. A flexible pipe bent around the gap at the front of the plate helps. The PSUs suffer with dirt quite badly and can become completely choked with dust and fluff, overheat and fail.
You might be surprised at the level of muck that blows out.
6) WHERE applicable, reset the pmu /smu – using the small grey button on the main logic board ( usually around the lower edge of the board). Unplug mains cable. Wait 10 secs. Press button firmly and precisely ONCE ONLY. wait 10 secs. Plug mains cable back in and replace covers. Start Mac.
7) DO NOT try to run these machines with the covers off. The acrylic plate directs air into the CPUs which can ‘Fry’ very quickly if the plate isn’t in place.
8) Re-Seat video card (usually AGP). Be careful not to break the plastic locking tab at the end of the slot
9) Take the machine back to its ‘factory’ RAM configuration. Remember these need to be in matched pairs, (start at the centre two and work outwards- [8 slot machines]).
Is it ‘happy’ with the original RAM config ? – Suspect one of the upgrade DIMMS & CHECK again that they are being installed in matched pairs.
10) Re-Install the OS using the ‘Archive & Install’ option at third screen in order to preserve your personal settings / data.
11) Minor maintnance point, but if the machine is 4 or 5 years ‘in’ – replace the system board battery….( the correct way around!)
Hope this lot helps someone out there, but if you’ve done all of the above and its still ‘sulking’ you’ll likely need to drop it into an equipped repair shop for detailed diagnostics.
Regards,
JH
I have a similar problem with my G5 Quad. It started yesterday after 25 months of flawless operation. My kid was playing Rainbow 6 and the screen suddenly went to diagonal red lines and the sound started “looping”. All attempts to force quit didn’t work and he ended up having to do a hard reboot. When it came back on, we got the chime but the screen stayed black. After a minute the fans went to turbo mode. Attempts to reset pram, boot into single user or even open the disk tray failed. The computer seems to not recognize the KB. We pulled out the four gig of ram that I had added some time ago and reseated the factory ram. Then tried pulling the factory ram and put in just the OWC ram. We reset the PMU. It’s pretty clean in there as we make a habit of keeping it clean. Still stuck.
i wonder why in the first place we face this problem at all.I use to brag n boast about the consistency of my powermac G5 Quad for the past 3 years… n then this happened..
I did not know about the “PMU switch” but later found out through some surfing but i think i might just have pressed it consecutively twice…. can please some one tell me what happens in that case.. i dint follow the “10 sec” routine either…
have my fingers crossed n am still stuck!!!
Thanks for posting our powermac G5 would only let us get past the log in screen, then showed our wallpaper with no icons, just a Magnifying glass in the top right corner and the fan thundering away like it was going to take off.
Did the Command, Option, O and F keys. At the prompt and entered:
reset-nvram
set-defaults
reset-all
Worked like a dream, the user was none too happy as he thought it was really screwed and he was going to get an new Mac.
Hello, getting similar problems but nothing above worked. g5 was working just fine and then today when i turned it on it only got to the apple sign and then tells me to restart the computer.
Any ideas of what i can do?
I have been having this problem and it eventually got worse and worse to the point where it won’t even recognize the boot disc anymore, funny thing is that it will still boot using the leoptard dvd, but won’t still won’t see the sata devices in disk utility. It wasn’t even getting far enough for the screen to even turn on 9 times out of 10 restarts. Finally I pulled the battery out and did a check with a voltage meter, no juice. Then I accidentally started it without replacing the battery and I was able to get to the open firmware utility finally, I used the commands and got it far enough to show the grey screen. Before i scrap it, I have a new cheapo video card in the mail and am heading to radio shack tomorrow for a new battery. The last question I had was has anyone read about those busted ass capacitors that afflicted the G5 imacs with the same types of problems? Basically some chinese company stole the designs for a basic capacitor and then flooded the electronics market with cheap capacitors, only to have a huge failure rate on them, causing a lot of electronic devices to crap out after a while. There aren’t as many caps on this mainboard as there are on the imac board, but they are so buried under the heat sink that it’s hard to tell if they are bulging. The video card shows a hint of bulging too.
Well, i’m sort of in the same boat here. But it appears that my problem in the hard drive. Worked fine 2 days ago.. just fresh installed leopard from the OS DVD…
then a day later… turbo fans, & flashing folder with mac & question mark..
Can do the Open Firmware resets, cannot do the command S resets.
Booted from OS DVD.. went into disc utilities… my hard drive doesnt show up. I have opened the case… checked connectors (sata type drive) I moved the drive to the other slot. nothing has worked for me. I dont think it crashed. Last I used it, I just shut it down.
All I want to do is go back to my spreadsheets! Please don’t make me pull out the iMac…. =]
Thought I would add to my comment above.. i’m running a Powermac G5 Dual 1.8Ghz
PowerMac G5, dual 2GHz processors and 2GB of RAM. I was messing around with the disk permissions and everything was OK until I rebooted. Now all I get is the chime and grey apple then the fans go turbo. I tried all above but noting works. Too much stuff not backed up to reload. Help!!
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I don’t know what went wrong where, but my hd crashed and I couldn’t reboot. Got the gray apple and turbo fans. I loaded the system cd and ran a permissions repair and I did what you suggested. Back up in an hour. Thank you so much. I truly appreciate you all sharing your insights.
Thanks so much! Out of nowhere my G5 froze up… i had to hold the power key to shut it down… then when i started back up… i got the grey apple screen and the fans blazing! i did pretty much everything suggested… but nothing worked until i reset the SMU… i let it sit for a good twenty minutes after i restarted after that and it FINALLY booted up… so just give it time after you perform these troubleshooting ideas guys… and it SHOULD work. Thank you thank you thank you!
Another thanks here! My G5 PowerMac did the same thing to me today after 4-5 perfect years, haven’t touched the ram since buying it. This took care of my issue. You are a lifesaver.
thank you Alex and John… success after doing both PRAM and NVRAM reset… going on 5 hours… fingers crossed
… using G% 2.3GHZ dual processor…
tried all not working. infact it seems to have gotten worse. boot-up and it goes to grey screen, apple apears, spining timmer for about 35 seconds, questionmark apears for split second, fans fire up loud and clear for about 45 seconds and then the whole computer just shuts down. black screen and then nothing..dead. Any suggestions?
been using this g5 quad for the past 4 years and have never had this problem. Been editing in final cut and right now I am in the middle of a job. this is frustrating, have spent all day messing with it. I even took it out pulled it a part and air blasted all the dust. There was plenty that came out, but still no luck.
SM
been having the same problems with my G5 Dual 1.8ghz. Couldn’t work on any music for a week until today. I tooked pairs of ram out & it booted up after the first pair was out. It took a while but still booted.
These posted tips got my PowerMAC G5 booting again. It ran fine for 3 1/2 years, then wham – the symptoms above.
Thanks for the tips. Upgrading my software now…
thanks – life saving tip, err $1500 dollar saving tip. Fixed my booting problem like THAT
My problem is as follows i bought a PowerMac G5 1.8ghz from a friend it was up and running fine. Startup and shutdown no problem until i got it home and set it up. i get nothing but the broken folder smiling at me with a question mark. it chimes like its going to start up regular but it goes directly to the finder face with a question mark! i’ve tried all the above and then some and nothing seems to work but it will boot with driver genius but not the original boot disk!!! i need help please!!!
I too had this problem. Found out it was a motherboard issue. Replaced and now my hard drive fan is going on full blast. Temperature monitors shows 25 degress C on the HD bay. Planning to disconnect HD fan and what happens. Thing it may be a bad fan.
I was having the No boot / Loud Fans issue too. After a couple of unsuccessful restarts, I first unplugged the power supply cord from the tower. I left it that way for 10+ minutes then re-plugged it in. First boot and all seems back to normal. I am currently running Disk Utility and verifying my hard drives.
It worked beautifully!! THANK YOU for saving me a costly trip to the mac doctor!
I’ve read this entire thread looking for an answer to my G5 problem, but mine seems to have a slight difference: I never even get to the grey screen! The light comes on, it chimes, and then after about 30 seconds come the LOUD hurricane fans (which it didn’t used to do)! I pushed the PMU reset button (more than once, though–the source I was using didn’t say to only push it once, but now it’s too late), I tried both command/opt/P/R and command/opt/O/F upon starting it up, but nothing has changed.
HELP! Woe is me–is it doomed????!?
Hello All,
I finally got my G5 issue fixed last night. Here is what I did (i tried all these things before but for some reason it worked this time).
I took out the ram and used a can or air to clean the ram and the ram slots. Resat them matching size.
Then I used the air can and cleaned all internal area’s. Took out battery for a few mins then replaced. Pushed button on logic board (i pushed it several times the other day so I don’t think it will harm you if you accidentally pushed more than once). I checked all wires and made sure everything was plugged in. Turned on and it worked!
I have declared that this was a RAM issue – one piece was loose so I moved it to another slot. WHen the RAM isn’t pushed into the sltos all the way it won’t come on. I also think the air cleaning helped – read that tip on another board.
G5 Towers – Racing fan!? Stuck on grey screen!? Not booting and /sbin/fsck -fy gets you back but not a fix!? reset-nvram, set-defaults and reset-all doesn’t help in Open Firmware!? Guess What!?!?!?……….
ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS REPLACE THE BATTERY ON THE MOTHERBOARD! (pram battery). TRY IT and thank me later.
– a friend and mac lover
didn’t work
simple fix to all these problems. This is where you need a ? to answer the ?….where do you place garbage? That is where all apple crap belongs!
Are you kidding me I’ve had this problem for weeks after upgrading from 3gigs to 4gigs of ram on my PowerMac G5 1.83 (non-intel) dude THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS!!!! Was just talking to my wife 10mins ago about buying a new powermac when she suggested to search google. Thanks I love forums!
i get this… it sounds serious… anyone help?
panic(cpu 2 caller 0x0009B174): mapping_alloc – empty mapping block detected at 24A0B000
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 2:
Backtrace:
0x000954F8 0x00095A10 0x00026898 0x0009B174 0x0009A15C 0x00098F78 0x00062AC8 0x000A865C
0x000ABB80
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x479CCA00)
PC=0x903B2204; MSR=0x0000F030; DAR=0x1400C000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x903B2178; R1=0xBFFFEC90; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 – Data access)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC
Hi Tony Espinosa, this is me thanking you later!
5 year old G5, hurricane fan no boot up- funny how terrifying that is first time you encounter it. Gave in inside a good clean but couldn’t get the bloody battery out (its the old style ones) so I did the old “magic battery” trick of rubbing and rotating it and put the G5 back together. Came back on like normal! So it could very well be the battery so just try this first. (which is great because I hate all those keyboard command input things)
Now to find an old style battery and a way to get it out….
Thanks to this forum that IS a life saver. Now backing up like crazy.
This was a lifesaver, thank you!
Actually it wasn’t just the battery in the end. All the above methods cured the problem for me initially but it came back again so I repeated resetting the Firmware where i suspect it didn’t take the first time, The reason?
Holding command, option, F, O, when releasing when the white screen with cursor and message comes up BE CAREFUL RELEASING KEYS AND NOT TYPING ANYTHING. I think I might have added a space or something first time as the command came up “unknown”. Maybe it pays to repeat these things. Anyway, fingers crossed, this is the second day and 4th start up and no problems. My G5 lives again.
Can I ask about a similar situation?
Early-2005 Power Mac G5 2.5 GHz dual. When booting, fans come on at hurricane strength, chime, Apple shows, then goes to blue screen and stays there until I shut down with power button.
I went to screwdrivers first, replacing first the nVidia 256MB video card. No effect. Then I replaced the logic board, no effect.
Searching on the Net, I came across these posts, learned about resetting some of the parameters. I first reset the Parameter RAM, and that helped just a bit…the fans stopped coming on at hurricane strength, but the machine still stayed on blue screen after the Apple. I then reset nvram and open firmware, no additional effect (the fans continued to behave themselves). While resetting the Open Firmware, the machine reported that the Macintosh HD was OK, but it still gave the warning that a file system had been modified.
The heat sink looks good (no coolant leaks), I have replaced two major hardware components (graphics card and logic board at a loss of $$$), and I took the battery out and put it back in, so I’m wondering if my problem is in the soft/firmware. What else can I try to isolate the problem before going back to the screwdrivers? Any thoughts?
I have a tower G5, and could not boot up, getting gray screen with folder and question mark followed by loud motor sound. Went through the above reset commands and restored my setting! Thank you!
wow, that was some scary s@#$. but
To boot into Open Firmware, shut down your Mac, then start it up while holding down the Command, Option, O and F keys. At the prompt, enter the following commands (you may want to write them down on a piece of paper before beginning this process), pressing the return key after each:
reset-nvram
set-defaults
reset-all
After which your Mac will restart.
worked!!!!! thank you!!!!
Thank you!!!!
My g5 sounded like airplane taking off – after two hours of fixes (including failed starts in safe mode, and trying to repair the drive in target disk mode) this is the trick in 30 seconds.
: D
Had the same issue. Just bought a powermac G5 dual core 2.3 from craigslist. Worked great when I tested it. Brought it home and hooked up Apple wireless keyboard and magic mouse and Apple 20″ Cinema display. Used an external USB bluetooth adapter. Everything worked great for about a day and then yesterday morning I wake up and see the display is black, the powermac is making loud airplane noise. I hard booted a couple of times no happiness. I hear the 3 chimes and then the fans start going full blast. Nothing on the display. Glad I found this forum. I tried the PRAM and NVRAM resets last night but they didn’t seem to do anything. Don’t think the machine was even taking keyboard input. So opened up the machine and air cleaned the dust, took the battery out (rather forced it out. I can’t for the life of me figure out how it goes in and out). Basically sprayed the air can all over the place. Took the ram chips out wiped them and plugged them back in and restarted the machine and voila all good. Keeping fingers crossed. I hope it stays that way. I hate technical problems that appear and go away mysteriously after spraying an air can.
Dual2.7GhzG5/4.5GB Ram/1TB HD/1.5TB HD/Radeon 9850 On re-start: Fans running full speed. Black screen. No chime on start-up. Never finishes re-start. Finally came up with routine that works every time. Remove metal door and plastic insert. Allow fans to run. Re-starts every time. Please note: if the plastic insert is re-installed before the computer finishes booting it will freeze. I must wait for every icon to be on the screen. Re-installing the plastic insert stops the fans from “blasting”. Works every time but is tedious. Any insight about why this routine works? Sometimes the machine will also re-start flawlessly if is has been turned-off for a long period of time.
Have tried all above but gray screen just stays with apple logo.
Any further suggestions please?
I’ve had my heavily modified G5 Quad PCIe since 2006, not a single issue since I got it till now. I cleaned out the machine, reseated the nvidia quadro4500 and the 7800. (Yes I’m running both in the same tower.) Ran fine for a while.. then the same happened. Turns out that all I needed to do was replace the system board battery.
Thanks for all the input guys!
My 2004/5 PowerPC G5 started freezing, had to hold down the power button to restart. After a couple of times of doing this it wouldn’t boot – grey screen, Chime, Apple Logo but no spinning wheel, then fans starting to race. Tried the P Ram, NV RAM etc stuff suggested above. No Joy.
Replaced the battery – it worked! For one day… Very strange… Next day it started doing the same thing as before. Called a repair shop, they said it was almost certainly a fried processor, and if not then the logic board, and would cost £300 to fix. Well it’s clearly not worth fixing a PowerPC machine now, so I gave up and started looking for a new Mac.
Despaired at the current Mac market – the Mini’s not powerful enough and has an outdated processor. The Imac has horrid glossy screen and colour issues. The Mac Pro is overpriced, and has no mid-range.
One last ditch attempt before giving up and getting a Mini anyway because it was the least bad option I tried replacing the RAM. Shouldn’ve done this first – don’t know why I didn’t, but anyway it worked! The two chips it came with must’ve gone dud, because as soon as I took them out it started working again.
My tip if this happens to you – change the battery, and test the RAM. And don’t listed to mac repair men!
Phew. Hopefully now I can get another year out it until Apple either drop the price of a Mac Pro or introduce a midrange model, or give the Mini I3 processors.
Kept freezing. On restart grey screen, Apple logo, no boot, crazy fans.
Tried the P RAM, NVRAM etc stuff. No joy.
Replaced the logic board battery, worked for one day, then same again.
Repair shop guy said it was probably the processor or logic board and £300 to fix. Bye bye G5! (I thought).
Went though the RAM testing pair by pair. Turns out I had a dodgy set. Works again!
Phew!
Hi, I wanted to add my system to the mix. I have a late 2004 G5 dual 2.0GHz with the original ATI Radeon 9600 XT video card and 4.5 GB Ram (last Ram addition was over 2 years ago). The system has been running almost flawlessly for about six years until last week when, after sitting idle for a couple of hours, I heard the fans running full blast. Tried restarting a few minutes later but was unable to get past the grey apple screen and within minutes the fans were full blast.
I tried every possible “easy” solution listed in this blog. I even replaced a still good logic board battery and tested all the ram (4 pairs) a pair at a time. I always kept the system clean (no pets, non-smoker, away from dust) but I pulled out and cleaned everything except the processors – didn’t want to dig in there. I was finally able to get the system to boot up after some messing about (a momentary success) and decided to run every software related fix on this site (thanks John Hill). Of course, I also ran the Apple Hardware Test too and everything was fine.
Up and running, I decided to leave my system on for a while but less than an hour later the hurricane fans were back and I was frozen. This time when I restarted I was totally dead. No chime and couldn’t even get to the grey apple screen.
So, I dismantled again and tried starting up. This time I got a chime and got to the grey apple screen but that was it. At this point I decided to try heating the logic board in the area between the processors and the memory with a blow dryer because a few people talked about that working. After a minute of hot air I replaced the fan and shield and… it started up fine.
Unfortunately the system still freezes and the fans start blowing at some point but at least I can get on the system for short stretches. I’ve been using a more recent Intel based Macbook Pro as my primary system for the past 3 years but it still sucks to have a basically unusable Mac.
So, does anybody know if this mean the logic board is definitely my problem?
Thanks,
Steve K. in L.A.
Hi,
You need to download a software called (APPLE SERVICE DIAGNOSTIC DISC).
In the program look for CPU + FAN CALIBRATION.
Run it and it will ask you to reboot.
That’s it.
Good Luck
Please let me know if it did work for you. It did for me. (my Powermac G5 DUAL 2.3 GHz)
Michel
It worked beautifully!! THANK YOU for saving me a costly trip to the mac doctor!
My Mac G5 Boots up Ok but after some time apprx 15-20 min ithangs and the fans starts to sound like airoplane. i did try all the possible ways like AHT, reseting PMU, PRAM, NVRAM but no use. please give some solutions.
Thank U
Hi guys I just bought a mac G5 1.8ghz which had no hard drive I have put a hard drive in and tried all of the above suggestions does any1 have any other solutions as I am still gettin the folder with the “?”
Please help 🙁
hello every one,i recently bought a power mac g5 dual 2.3 ghz on craigslist and binn having it for 6 months . I was using it to make music on logic studio,and i used toast titanium to burn a movie on dvd one day and it took 3 days to burn it,it was super slow after that but it was wierd bcus ive burned movies on to dvds b4 but they wouldent take days….but anyway,after the movie was done i turned it off and turned it back on. Then it would get to the apple logo then the fans would spinn like crazy,i tried the command+o+f thing but didnt work ssooo now im hoping its the PRAM BATTERY or the fact its SUPPER DUSTY !!!! PLZZZZ HELP :/
Hi Guys
I have this problem start happening over the last 2 weeks sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn’t today I turned the machine on and the only thing that happens is the fan comes on at full speed no power to key board or screens what can I do can someone please please HELP
I had the fans running full blast and it wouldn’t boot. I tried setting p-ram, safe mode and also tried booting off of the OS disc, but nothing worked… then I read your post and booted into firmware and re-set it as per your instructions. It is now working fine… thanks!
NEW PRAM BATTERY!!!!!
I had grey screen with apple logo then nothing for a few minutes, then fans on at full blast. After trying resetting, rebooting, cleaning and reseating everything still the same problem. then spent £4.95 on a new pram battery 1/2 aa 3.6v size, problem solved. got to be worth a try before replacing bits or taking it to someone to fix
Hi everyone: I bought a G5 2.7 dual from eBay and the system would freeze between 5-20 minutes and the jet engine fans would blast.I tried everything posted with no results. All temps in istat were normal, AHT was ran with all systems passed, Techtool Pro showed all systems passed, and even the Apple store gave it a clean bill of health. Believe it or not, a box fan sitting in front of my G5 blasting through the machine allows it to run perfectly. I do not understand this but I think the ambient temperature sensor is not working, does anyone have advice? It’s kind of lame to run a big noisy fan to make my puter work. Please help.
I’m surprised at how many have this problem. I’ve been using second hand
macs for 13 years, and I’ve never seen such dirty insides as a G5.
I think the fan system draws in dirt and dust like no other, and that would cause most components to malfunction.
I tried some of the fixes here, with no luck yet. I should also note that this
G5, I found on the street. I’m writing this on my trusty MDD dual 1.25 G4,
for which I bought for $150. on craigslist a year and a half ago. It runs like
a dream….
What have Apple done? I don’t remember having these problems with my G3!
Same problem here I’m afraid. I left my PowerMac G5 running, only to return to find the screen black and all fans running at high speed. No reaction from keyboard or mouse, so I had to force shut-down by pressing the power button for 5 secs. Now when I press Power the Mac surges up, the fans come on, but there’s no start “Bong!” and the screen stays blank. I’ve unplugged everything except the keyboard, but still no joy. I’ve tried the usual keyboard shortcuts to try and fix the PRAM, but the Mac doesn’t get far enough to regonise any keyboard – all it does is turn it’s fans on, it just doesn’t start! What can I do??
i took out the cpus and cleaned the socketscontacts with sanding paper.
swapped the bottom and the top cpu. started up , swapped them back because fans ran wild.
all is well now.
sanding paper is a bit rude but the mac was in a coma anyway.
My Mac used to do this fan thing on start up every now and then, so I came across this and thought I’d try it.
Now it does it EVERY time on start up!
Not the best tip I’ve ever tried, for sure 🙁
Everything worked. Was able to type in the commands, the computer initiated the reboot, but it ended up on the screen with the Face/? folder flashing at me again :(.
for what its worth my old Power Mac G5s (I have two of them that we purely use for web) did the old fans going ape a a clicking sound trick – each time (happened twice in a few years) I solved it with taking the video card out and re-seating it – so could purely be dust/heat build up IMO
…oh and the dead battery I would look for initially…
I read all of this and ran all the solutions with no success. I’m trying to run disk utility and I get “reserved fields in the catalog record have incorrect data.” for everything on both harddrives. Is this dead harddrives or something else? any help?
If you can boot to run disk utility, you have a different problem.
Was able to use the Open Firmware solution. My tired G5 came back to life. So far no fan trying to hover out of this world. God bless you!