Black screen on power up
When I boot up sounds like everything is booting but the monitor screen is black. I can hear the fans running
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Have you tried booting from your installation disk? Insert the disk and start up holding down the "C" key. We need some more clues to try to help. Do you get a tone on start up? Did it crash all of a sudden? Also try starting up from the installation disk holding down the "D" key. Please let us know the results plus anything else that might help us pinpoint your problem.
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I had the boot up disc stuck in it and finally after googling a few sites was able to get it out. I am a PC to Mac person and very unfamiliar with it. I bought it used. It was working fine and then I went to boot it up and it powers up, fans are running but I am not hearing any tones. The screen is definitely black and I do not think I see any kind of pixels. Any other ideas you may have would be greatly appreciated. I want to take it apart, but lol, don't know what I would be looking for. Thank you for your response.
What happened when you tried to start up from the CD? We need to try some things. Reset the PRAM by hitting the start button, immediately hold down the option - command (the key right next to the space bar with the Apple on it) - P & R keys. Let it tone three times and then try restarting. Sometimes we have to do a lot of things to pinpoint the problem and usually along the way we find an answer. Patience.
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Try to connect the iMac to an external monitor and tell us if you have normal video on the external then we'll go further in the troubleshooting steps.
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There doesn't seem to be any response from keyboard or mouse. Hooked up to external monitor and display says monitor status DVi no signal and then says monitor going to sleep. Disc one is stuck inside drive. On boot up it makes a couple sounds like it wants to read the disc and then it just spins. Fans are running.
Seems to be a logic board failure but I would try to boot from an external source like a firewire\USB hard drive or from an external optical drive. Did you try to boot the iMac holding down the mouse clic button to eject the disk stuck inside the machine ?
OK I took out the memory and put back just one in the slot closest to the display, it chimed on boot up and you could tell that the screen had turned on, it was still dark but occasionally it would flash a horizontal line. The keyboard and mouse also responded by lighting up and if you tapped the keys it would make sound. The power light went off though but the computer stayed on. I put in the operating disc and you can hear the hard drive working and I could also eject the disk on boot up by holding down the mouse button. If I put both memory sticks in the computer turns on, the screen is totally black and the power light stays on but the keyboard & Mouse do not work. Any ideas?
Take the second RAM piece out and move the good one to the other slot. Boot with the install disk in and the "C" key held down.
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Well, what can i said about this very weird failure. I took the iMac to the Technical Service. They told me the could do a free budget so why not. 2 Days later they call me with "Your iMac is Fixed now". What was the problem "We just reseted the Motherboard, is a common failure"
Well that explanation seems a bit of BS to me. I know what they could do because i couldn't even turn it when i took it there. I don't know how they get it to turn it on. Maybe i should have taken the RAM away. Anyhow i used this iMac from 3 years now and i do smell a bit of burnt plastic in the back. I don't know if that is due to dust or something else.
The iMac does work fine now, but i wouldn't like to go through this again. Beside the Technical Service did charge me an hour of work for this.
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By the way, i am reading in some forum that what the Technical Service might have done is just resetting the PMU of my iMac and charged me 80 euros for that. I feel a bit fool about it. I have no idea how they turned on the computer since i couldn't do it.
Well everyday you learn something.
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Oops I am sorry my post was so similar to this one that i mistaken as mine. I had a look alike problem.
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thanks to all that have had their input to my question. I finally have resolution. The memory bank on the board is bad, I bought one 2 gig memory and put it in the good memory slot and the computer is up and running once more.
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