# Black Screen, can't start-up from CD drive



## RainboMama (Jan 27, 2008)

I've had macs since 1984, and been online since 1995.

Here's my problem.

I have a G4, 900MHZ (I think), I can't check right now, because I can't get my computer to start up!, Tiger 10.4.1.1. I have two hard drives - one is 12G, the other is 60G. I have my system, and applications, on the smaller drive, and my data on the larger one.

I got this computer from craigslist in the fall. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to set it up for several months, so I couldn't go back to the guy who sold it to me (for $425! - which is a pretty expensive G4 for craigslist - I'd had cheaper ones that broke too quickly, so I decided to invest double what I'd previously spent in the past).

The very first time I used it, I got the black rectangle with the "You need to restart this computer now" in several different languages. As it had been many months since I bought it, I didn't contact the seller, and just restarted, and continued using the machine.

Every day it would freeze at least once or twice, often in Photoshop, or this game I play, Luxor, and I'd get the black rectangle.

After a while, every once in a while, when I'd restart, I'd get a tone, and then an intermittent beeping tone, but I'd shut all the way down, and restart, and be able to get back up and running.

A few days ago, I couldn't get it to restart after freezing in Photoshop. Only the round start-up button would work to start it up at all, not the little restart button that's a bump, on the left, underneath the round start-up button.

I put an OSX disk in the CD drive, but I couldn't get it to see the CD drive at all. It was just a black screen, with the fan whirring, but nothing else.

I looked online, and found out how to use Target Disk Mode, and was able to connect to it from my laptop with an Ethernet cable. I was able to select a different start up disk, and was able to boot up, with it accessing the CD drive. I then ran Disk Utility, and fixed and repaired the disk and the permissions.

Not ten minutes after this, I accidentally deleted my main work folder. Most of it was backed up, but not the latest work I'd done. I, again, went online, and was able to get a program to recover all my data. This took days, as you can't recover to the same drive as the one that has the deleted date. As I mentioned, the hard drive that I was recovering to is very small, and only has about 2 G of unused space, so I had to recover the files in sections, and then transfer it to my iBook, and then delete it from my smaller hard drive, before recovering more files.

Then I had to switch all the files back to the Drop Box on my smaller drive, and transfer it back to my larger drive, which doesn't have a system or drop box on it.

This all took days, and my computer ended up being on for all that time, as I was afraid to shut it down before the process was complete.

At any rate, after just finally completing the transfer process, I went into photoshop, and after about 20 minutes, it froze.

Now I once again have the black screen, but I can no longer hold down the T key at start-up, and get Target Disk mode going. When I hit the round start-up button, the green light goes on, and then I hear a tone for while, and then the green light flickers yellow, and then the only thing that is on, is the fan. I tried starting up holding down the Option Key, or holding down the "C" key, or holding down the "T" key, but none of them worked.

I tried to find another solution to my problem online, but (obviously) haven't found anything that works yet.

I am not knowledgeable in the inner workings of Macs, so some sites recommended fixes using language I didn't even understand.

I've read that it was caused by many different things (bad logic board, etc), but none of them had fixes I could try.

That's my problem. Any suggestions anyone?

Tara
California


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

With you getting the, please restart your Mac box, and the different tones at startup, mixed with random freezes, I'd say you have a hardware issue. Being it was fine until you started Photoshop after the recovery, I'd first suspect the RAM. I'd open the Mac and see how many sticks there are, if there is more than one, then you can pull them all out and then just put one in at a time and see if it'll run (it will be slow). If you get one that kills the Mac, put it aside. After testing all the RAM, put all the ones that seemed to work back in and see how it does. If it dies again, then try different RAM slots, incase one of the slots is bad. Other than that, pull all your USB and Firewire devices and see how it does, pull any PCI cards it may have, and try a different keyboard and mouse. If none of these things seem to help, than you most likely do need a new motherboard, at which case you'd be better off getting a new Mac than repairing.


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