On Oct 30, 2011, at 5:54 PM, Gregg Dinse wrote: > Hi Vince, > > As I wrote a few minutes ago, I tried holding down the "D" key while booting, > but it had no effect, so I guess my system does not have the hardware test > built-in (or it is too messed up to get to it). > > I guess the next step is to either take the iMac to a repair shop or to try > inserting the hardware diagnostic DVD. Do you have a good sense for whether > or not I might be able to boot from the DVD and, if not, whether I could get > the DVD out? > > Is there a command from single user mode to eject the DVD? Does this usually > work?
I think it is worth testing a few things - see if you can get to the boot menu where the system gives you a choice of boot devices. I believe you stated before you couldn't because the firmware installer was taking precedence. So in order to get to the boot menu, you could boot into single user mode, do some googling and see if there is a command to mac the mac "forget" that it is supposed to boot into firmware mode. Then reboot, again trying the Option key to see if the boot menu appears. If it does, then insert the DVD with the hardware diag program on it, wait a minute and it will then appear in the boot menu, and pick that. Run the tests. If everything but the HD checks out, you know that the DVD will be easy to get out once the HD is replaced, but a reboot and a well-timed hitting of the eject key on a wired keyboard should cause the disk to eject. It may be more simple to boot into single user mode and insert the DVD and run the diag from there. I *think* I've done that before, but Google would probably provide a quicker, more accurate answer than I have. :) If you can run the diag from single user mode, then you don't have to mess with overriding the firmware update flag. /vjl/_______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
