iMac problem

[john.hodges]

Hi everyone.

 

Can anyone please tell me if they have had the following problem and, if so, was it ‘fixable’?

 

1.83GHz Intel iMac, 2007, was running 10.4.11, started up one morning and got as far as the desktop picture then the screen went blue for about 10 seconds then the desktop picture appeared for about 2 seconds then blue again – carried on doing this indefinitely.

 

Installed 10.5.5 from remote drive today (successfully), restarted and the same thing is still happening except this time the desktop picture lasts for about 4 seconds then 10 seconds of blue screen, followed by 2 seconds of ‘darker’ blue screen, then the desktop image again, etc, etc...

 

It starts up and displays perfectly well and is accessible from remote volume, install DVD or as target. It’s only when it starts up from the internal drive the problem appears.

 

I’ve run Disk Utility and all appears well. Repaired O&P and reset PRAM.

 

Any ideas, please?

 

Thanks in advance,

John

[Sam - MacAmbulance]

Hi John

I've got an imac in for repair since Friday which is exhibiting similar symptoms except I can't reset the PRAM or choose a boot drive, no matter what key I hold down it just boots from the internal drive. I can move the mouse around when it boots so USB is working fine (tried another keyboard too).

At the moment I'm leaning towards a faulty motherboard. or graphics card.

Regards

Sam

providing affordable Apple & PC services
Sam Mullen
07747 778022
http://www.macambulance.co.uk
in...@macambulance.co.uk

[john.hodges]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for the info. Would it still perform correctly booting from an external drive if the motherboard or graphics card were faulty?

If it is one or the other, what, in your opinion, could the likely cost of repair be, please?

Thanks again,

John

 

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[Tom Coady]

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 7:13 PM, Sam - MacAmbulance <in...@macambulance.co.uk> wrote:

I've got an imac in for repair since Friday which is exhibiting similar symptoms except I can't reset the PRAM or choose a boot drive, no matter what key I hold down it just boots from the internal drive. I can move the mouse around when it boots so USB is working fine (tried another keyboard too).

If that's the machine I'm thinking of it had a rather weird mouse plugged in the back. According to this the solution was to plug in via the keyboard:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8173831

I doubt it's that simple though. 

[Sam - MacAmbulance]

Hi John

If the motherboard's faulty it won't boot properly from anything. If the SATA connection on the motherboard's broken it might boot from an external but not internal, loading software onto it from the external should also give errors though.

I'd try a full zero format. Disk Utility > Click the device name (directly above the disk's volume name) > click on Erase > Options > Zero Format > Erase > Reinstall OS X.

[Sam - MacAmbulance]

Hi Tom

I've tried that, oddly the machine recognised the alt startup key once but didn't do it again. Am still investigating.

Cheers for the link.

[Ana Luiza Iaria]

Hi,

maybe someone can shed some light.

My MBP works fine wirelessly at home and has worked at other places.

But I can't make it access the College wireless network. The only
place it works in inside the ICT department and in front of the tech
support guy. No sooner than I leave the room, it stops working. He is
as baffled as me, as all settings are fine! Lots of people use Mac
there and none reported this problem, according to him. True, just
yesterday there were 4 at SCR surfing the net and moi... looking.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Ana

================================
Ana Luiza Iaria, MSc, MCIL, MITI, ATA member
English and Italian > Brazilian Portuguese Translator
Crawley, England (GMT)
================================

[Richard Wells]

Bit of a technical question... Leopard comes with PHP installed but
without the GD extension (for working with images). If I want to add
that, do I have to download and install a new PHP package (eg from
entropy.ch) or can I get just the GD bit somehow. Or can I simply turn
on GD in the pre-installed set up (tweak the php.ini file perhaps)?

Richard

[Tom Coady]

On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Richard Wells <ric...@richard-wells.co.uk> wrote:

Bit of a technical question... Leopard comes with PHP installed but
without the GD extension (for working with images).

http://www.kenior.com/macintosh/adding-gd-library-for-mac-os-x-leopard 

[Richard Wells]

Thanks Tom. I found that page last night but was put off, wrongly, by
the talk of OS X Server at the top. It also seemed as complicated as
installing a whole new, complete, up-to-date PHP package instead of
just a patch. However I have just realised that my PHP is the latest
stable one (5.2.6 from July) so it must be doing a good job of
updating itself.

In short, thanks again. I will give it a go.

Richard

[Gareth McMillan]

Can I suggest following this comment here:

http://macoshelp.blogspot.com/2008/02/adding-gd-library-for-mac-os-x-leopard.html?showComment=1207999020000#c1894212537187307193

[James Docherty]

Seconded. This technique works really well!

James Doc

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spam.j...@gmail.com

[Richard Wells]

Thanks Gareth and James (for some reason I did not get Gareth's email
directly, I wonder what else I am missing). I assume there is no
downside to replacing my surprisingly-up-to-date PHP 5.2.6 with olde-
worlde-sepia-tinged PHP 5.2.4? I am impressed by the way that the
default PHP installation seems to keep updating itself!

Richard

[James Docherty]

No, there is very little noticeable differences between the two... it
will probably only be a small bug fix that isn't really noticeable!

James Doc
---
spam.j...@gmail.com

[john.hodges]

Hi Sam,

Just thought I’d let you know that the ‘zeroing’ and erase worked (touch wood) and all seems well at the moment.

I’m trying to find another image which had the same problem as the student I was talking about has deleted her files which were problematic!!

Thanks again,

John

 

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From: sm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:sm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Sam - MacAmbulance
Sent: 02 October 2008 08:58
To: sm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [sussex_mug] Re: iMac problem

 

Hi John