MDD Power Mac G4 freezes upon boot up

[NickNick]

Hey there. So I have an issue with my power mac G4 MDD the 876 MHz model. Recently won a bid for two, one works great this one, not so much. Had to replace both hard drives as they just clicked. Installed mac OS 9.2.2 for MDD power macs on them. The one machine works perfect, the 876mhz one wont fully boot. Gets to the Mac OS 9.2 screen then the screen flickers and goes black with just a mouse pointer. It freezes up, even the power button does nothing. Have to un plug it. However, when I remove the video card the machine will boot up I believe but I cant tell. I believe it boots fully because the power button in now responsive and will put the machine to sleep when I press it. If I put the video card back in it, the same results happen. It freezes with the black screen and just a mouse pointer. The video card does show an image when the machine is turned on and shows it booting. It just gets to a point every time and will freeze. Not sure what to do here other than order another video card. Any ideas would  be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.

 

[CC_333]

It sounds like maybe that card has failed, and it crashes when the drivers are loaded at startup.

With the card installed, try booting with extensions off (or anything ATI or NVIDIA related removed from the Extensions folder) and see what happens.

c

 

[NickNick]

Thanks CC_333 for your reply. That's that I was thinking as well but I find it strange that it even shows a picture at all. The picture shows up perfectly. I just cant get it to stop freezing. I tried the extensions off as well and still the same results. I believe this card is the NVidia geforce4 card as that is what the back of the machine states. How do I specifically locate the NVidia drivers if I cant get the machine to bot. The same results happen when I boot from a CD too.

 

[tanaquil]

Can you use the video card from the working machine to test the non-working machine? 

 

[NickNick]

I actually tried that but with the video card from my G4 Digital Audio model. The same results happened but I was able to boot actually into the OS but then the screen went black as soon as the desktop loaded. I defiantly think its a software issue however using the install disks should have the drivers on them. I actually re installed the OS on the Digital Audio G4 with 9.2.1 from 9.0 and now the same thing happens. It loads into the desktop but then goes black. the screen goes into standby mode but the computer is on. Could it be that the video is outputting to the ADC port and not the DVI/VGA? If so is there a way to switch that besides in the control panel? I don't know that's going on.

 

[NickNick]

Ok, So been messing with the G4 Digital Audio one and got it to work again with 9.2.1. I just decided to hook it up to my Sony TV that was right there and it worked the entire time. It was the monitor that was the issue. Strange as it was working on that very monitor that it decided to not work on just before the re-installation of the OS. Now that that is figured out I will try the G4 MDD one with the other video card hooked up to the Sony TV. Hopefully that is the issue.

 

[NickNick]

So its for sure the video card as, I took the card out of the DA G4 machine and popped it into the MDD G4 and it booted fully. New card is already ordered off ebay. Just waiting for it to come. Thank you everyone for your input!

 

[error1]

I had a similar freezing problem with the stock ATI AGP card in the old G4 MDD I bought, at first I got a geforce4 card to replace it with but it was such a pain to get working in OS9 that in the end I gave up on AGP cards and ordered a PCI Radeon 7000. It has been reliable afterwards.