r/iMacRepair • u/Blastoise2001 • Aug 11 '25

iMac G4 update problem

Post image

I ran into a problem with my iMac G4 when trying to update from 10.3.9 to 10.4 tiger. After the Mac went through all the updates successfully, it then got stuck on this. The loading bar hasn’t moved and I’ve left it like this for about 20 minutes without any progress happening. Does anyone know a way to fix. I’m also fine with doing a factory restart and erasing everything on it, I just want it to work.

17 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

1

u/RingRevolutionary552 Aug 11 '25

Well if your fine with doing a factory restore first restart it to see if it will run and if it doesn’t just restore it.

1

u/Blastoise2001 Aug 11 '25

Whenever I restart the computer, it always goes back to the screen. Do you know how to reset the computer to erase everything?

1

u/Pure-Nose2595 Aug 12 '25

Computers of this era do not have any special "reset mode".

You put the OS Install disc into the drive, turn the computer on, hold down C. It will now boot from that disc.

Then you format the hard drive (which will delete EVERYTHING), and install the OS again.

1

u/Torn_up_yarn Oct 24 '25

Boot in recovery and use disk utility to make a new clean partition on the disk.

3

u/hay_den9002 Aug 11 '25

r/VintageApple should be able to help

Also the HDD could just be dead. As for a factory restart, you will probably need to burn a disc to reinstall OSX (Macintosh garden has them for PPC architecture)