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VirtualAdept

VirtualAdept

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Mads
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Hi all and welcome to my tale of woe.
I have an old 2009 2007 imac and was happily watching C4F1 last night when all of a sudden, the browser crashed. As it was full screen, I tried to kill the application but instead the whole thing just... stops.
Eventually I turned it off by holding the power button. Turn it back on ten minutes later and I'm greeted with the bong sound and a blank white screen. No apple, no loading bar. Just a blank screen.

After doing some internetting, I tried starting while holding shift to enter safe mode (no joy)
CMD+R (No joy)
CMD+OPT+R (No joy)

So I cant get into safe mode or recovery mode, it just sits there, taunting me with a white screen.
The keyboard is wired and was working wonderfully right up until the aforementioned incident.
I don't have a time machine backup, not that I could get into recovery mode to load it anyway

so... any ideas how to get this beastie working again?
 
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Similar happened to my 2012 Mac book pro a few years ago. If I remember correctly is was the hard drive that failed.

Whacked in an ssd and restored from time machine and all was good again.

Did you have anything valuable on there? Do you have another backup (you mention no time machine).

T
 
Tdes said:
Similar happened to my 2012 Mac book pro a few years ago. If I remember correctly is was the hard drive that failed.

Whacked in an ssd and restored from time machine and all was good again.

Did you have anything valuable on there? Do you have another backup (you mention no time machine).

T
Click to expand...


All my important stuff, music, photos etc, are on external drives, so thats not a worry.
I don't have an SSD, but I do have a 2.5" sata drive I could swap in with it, might be worth a shot, then do a clean install over the net?
 
VirtualAdept said:
All my important stuff, music, photos etc, are on external drives, so thats not a worry.
I don't have an SSD, but I do have a 2.5" sata drive I could swap in with it, might be worth a shot, then do a clean install over the net?
Click to expand...
Probably your best shot, if you have a tm backup you could have restored from that which may have been easier.
 
If you get stuck it might be sensible to contact Bramley Computers in Chesterfield. They are good at sorting out iMacs and doing SSD upgrades.

bramley-computers.co.uk

Bramley Computers - Independent Apple Mac Specialist

Independent Apple Mac Specialist based in Chesterfield, serving Derbyshire, the Peak District, South Yorkshire & beyond.
bramley-computers.co.uk bramley-computers.co.uk

I don't think imacs are that easy to take apart. They seem to be laptop stuff jammed into a vertical case system and the screen can be bonded to a lot of it. Later ones are far worse though.
 
2007 iMacs are very easy to open up. Just use some suckers or even packing tape to remove the glass (it's just stuck on with magnets), then carefully remove the screen.
 
That's old! If you can't get into Recovery mode, that could be more serious than a failed disk.

Restart your Mac and press Option immediately. This should bring up the Startup Disk manager. If it does you may or may not see your start up disk there, if you do, then try it...
 
Pound Coin said:
That's old! If you can't get into Recovery mode, that could be more serious than a failed disk.

Restart your Mac and press Option immediately. This should bring up the Startup Disk manager. If it does you may or may not see your start up disk there, if you do, then try it...
Click to expand...

I get a cursor and nothing else, the disk manager doesn't appear
 
I think a motherboard or something like that.

Your disk may well be fine and if so you should be able to recover everything from it.
 
See what happens if you reboot, but with the 'D' key held down before the chimes, and keep held until (or if) you get a blue screen,
 
Sounds identical to when the hard disk failed on my MBPro and also my first iMac; I was able to take them to an Apple store for a free Genius session where they booted each from an external disk and reformatted the internal hard disk to exclude the failed sector of the disk from the file system, and both have been fine ever since (both computers were well out of warranty). Obviously this is a procedure that can also easily be done at home if you know how to force it to boot from and external device - memory stick or ext dvd/hd or connected computer
 
Yes, that might be possible, but he would lose everything on the internal disk. He'd need to be able to boot in Target Mode (see below).

Although I'd never re-use a disk with a failed sector - that's a failing disk...

@VirtualAdept also, you could try rebooting with the 'T' key held down and see if you get a FireWire logo moving about the screen. If so you might be able to mount the machine's internal disk on another mc. If you had one and a suitable cable.
 
Riiiiiight then, thank you all for your help so far.
I've dismembered the mac and plonked in a nice 1TB drive. Put it all back together and, no matter what keyboard shortcuts I use, it gives me the white screen for a bit, then the flashing folder with the question mark.
I cant get it into recovery or internet recovery, or any other action.
If I hold option down, as before, I get a cursor but nothing else.
 
VirtualAdept said:
Riiiiiight then, thank you all for your help so far.
I've dismembered the mac and plonked in a nice 1TB drive. Put it all back together and, no matter what keyboard shortcuts I use, it gives me the white screen for a bit, then the flashing folder with the question mark.
I cant get it into recovery or internet recovery, or any other action.
If I hold option down, as before, I get a cursor but nothing else.
Click to expand...

(this bloke on the internet says...)
Flashing folder with a question mark means it cannot find a boot drive. If you cannot get internet recovery running, youll need install CDs...
 
Possibly Firewire - it depends on the age of the machine. USB booting is a later addition to the Mac line-up, so older machines don't have it.

You also need a bootable drive with a suitable version of OSX and with the right connection.
 
Pound Coin said:
(this bloke on the internet says...)
Flashing folder with a question mark means it cannot find a boot drive. If you cannot get internet recovery running, youll need install CDs...
Click to expand...


So I've been thinking about this... With the old drive in, it just sits there, white screen, no matter how long I leave it. With the new (no OS) drive, it recognises there's no OS and does the flashy folder thing. That suggests to me that the issue is indeed the old drive, otherwise it'd just sit on the blank screen with the new drive too.
Is that a reasonable line of thinking?

EDIT:: After ten minutes of sitting there with the original drive, I know how a folder with a question mark with no flashing, its just static.
 
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Yes, the sounds a sensible supposition. Have you any way of getting a suitable OS on the new disk?
 
Pound Coin said:
Yes, the sounds a sensible supposition. Have you any way of getting a suitable OS on the new disk?
Click to expand...

I've got an external enclosure I can connect to another mac, on Sierra, but I'm not sure how I could then get yosemite or el capitan (the latest compatible with the 2007 mac) on it to make it bootable.
I've googled but get utterly lost.
 
Sorry, am busy with other things otherwise I would have a longer look.

does this help at all?

www.macworld.com

How to create a bootable USB masOS installer

Make a macOS installer with createinstallmedia and install Monterey or another macOS on multiple Macs, do a clean install, or access a faulty Mac.
www.macworld.com www.macworld.com
 
Pound Coin said:
Sorry, am busy with other things otherwise I would have a longer look.

does this help at all?

www.macworld.com

How to create a bootable USB masOS installer

Make a macOS installer with createinstallmedia and install Monterey or another macOS on multiple Macs, do a clean install, or access a faulty Mac.
www.macworld.com www.macworld.com
Click to expand...

Mate, I really appreciate your help. I've downloaded it and whatnot, but for some reason when I C&P the command its saying command not found.

EDIT: Had to find another page to tinker with the command, but its currently copying stuff to usb, so fingers crossed.
 
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Hooray!!
 
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