# imac g5 17inch (isight) help...



## dirtofcleveland (Nov 24, 2008)

so i came home to my computer one day and it was making a clicking sound i have never heard before. i wake it up, move the cursor around and i cannot click on anything. so the only way i could get it to restart was by shutting it off manually by holding the power button. i waited for a bit... turned it back on, and wen't through the grey screen and looked like it was going to start up again but instead it stayed grey and a folder in the middle showed up. and it flashed two icons on the folder, alternating between the two; the finder icon, and a question mark.

so i read up some things off the apple support site that it was my hard drive had failed, i had called apple to confirm this; they had me go through and put the startup disc in and see about installing the operating system again, when it came to time to install to the drive it didn't show up... so i wen't through the lovely long process of taking the computer apart and swapping out my hard drive with a new one. fixing my computer i thought i put it back together.... and yet my computer still has the same problem, start up disc does not read there is a hard drive.

any ideas what else it could be? hopefully one where i do not have to take this thing apart. i dont know if many of you out there have done so, but it is not the easiest, as easy as it seems going through the face of the computer and removing the lcd to get to the hard drive is not an easy task.

the only thing that i can think of is wrong now is maybe the wiring from the hard drive is no good anymore? which im hoping is not the case....


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

If a new hard drive didn't fix it, I'd be thinking that the motherboard is bad. Have you run the Apple Hardware Test CD yet?


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## dirtofcleveland (Nov 24, 2008)

i don't believe i own that one....
i just received the install discs (1&2)

but if the motherboard was bad would it even get to that screen where the file is flashing the icons? or would it just not start at all?


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Depends on which part of the board is bad. If the hard drive controller is bad, it will not see the hard drive, but the rest will still work. One of the CDs you have should say hardware test on it, it'll most likely be in small text. Other than that, are you sure you connected the power and data cables correctly and snugly? And I'm going to assume that it was a brand new hard drive you put in.


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