Hi John, A couple of thoughts. I would try to start simple and proceed from there. If your friend has the original disks that came with iMac, she could boot into the hardware test and run the hardware test. This should give you a pretty good idea of whether the hardware is sound. Assuming everything checks out ok, boot from the Leopard install disk. If the screen brightness is restored to normal, this will be further evidence that software is the problem. I would then open Disk Utility under the Utilites menu and run it.
Normally you should check the firmware. In this case, the 17" 1GHz iMac does not require a firmware update. Following that, assuming she has sufficient disk space, I think it makes sense to do an archive & install of Leopard. Make sure the box to restore existing settings and user accounts is checked. This is the default setting. This will give her a fresh install of Leopard and help to eliminate any issues caused by upgrading from an earlier version of OS X. Hope this helps. Jim On Oct 22, 2008, at 3:13 PM, schrödinger's cat wrote: > > hi folks, > > newbie to this list, so please forgive me if this topic has already > been discussed. a friend asked me to help fix her imac. it is a 17" > G4/1.0 model, and here is the problem. she had either 10.2 or 10.3 > installed, she doesn't remember which. she bought 10.5 and installed > it as an upgrade instead of backing up her files, reformatting the > disc, and doing a fresh install. what happened next is kinda > strange. the machine will boot, but the screen stays black. but not > totally black, just 99.9% black. if you look at the screen at just > the right angle, and in just the right light, you can just barely make > out that the desktop is actually there. everything seems to be > working as it should, except for the dark screen. it's like someone > turned the screen's *brightness* control down to a hair above > completely black. apple told her it's a hardware problem, and > suggested she bring it to an apple store. > > but i had a very similar occurrence with a wallstreet that had a dead > PRAM battery. once it was left off for so long that the main battery > went dead, and when i charged it and fired it up, i got exactly the > same symptoms. a lister on the powerbooks list suggested that i > reboot once from OS9, and that the problem would disappear. i > followed his suggestion, and voila, he was right. the screen came > back on, and i was then able to reboot from OSX, and it has been fine > since. this makes me think that my friend's problem might not be > hardware at all, but a software problem caused by the way she upgraded > to 10.5 directly from 10.2 or 10.3, which apple says you are NOT > supposed to do. > > has anyone heard of a similar situation or problem and can anyone > suggest a simple solution like the one that worked for my wallstreet? > thanks for reading, and thanks to anyone who replies. > > john > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Low End Mac's iMac List, a group for those using G3, G4, G5, and Intel Core iMacs as well as Apple eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
