glass two
Level 1 (4 points)
Mac OS X

Q: Mac Tower won't boot up

Hi .. our iMac desktop has been working for years.  It now starts, the Apple logo appears and the spinning icon appears, however nothing happens from there.  I've tried the troubleshooting tips .. restart holding different key combinations brought nothing new, restart holding Option key did bring up the Startup Disk icon, but clicking only brought me back to the Apple logo and the spinning icon.  Then tried restarting while holding the Shift key .. that brought the Apple icon to the screen, but no spinning icon.  Am running Snow Leopard, 10.6

Suggestions will be appreciated .. thanks!

iMac (17-inch Late 2006), Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 10, 2016 9:54 AM

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glass two

Q: Mac Tower won't boot up

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  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Aug 11, 2016 7:38 AM in response to glass two
    Level 9 (53,552 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 11, 2016 7:38 AM in response to glass two

    Safe Mode (shift key) bypasses most of the immediate problem spots when booting. It may be the directory of the drive is corrupt. Safe Mode does a simplified version of directory repair but if this is the problem and Safe Mode won't do it then you need a stronger tool. Diskwarrior is usually recommended but it isn't cheap ($100) and there is no trial mode to see if it can actually help.

     

    Will your drive boot to your OSX installer disk? You can try effecting repairs using Disk Utility from there and see if it is any different.  If not you can try re-installing OSX. Of course there is the question about doing this on top of a possibly corrupt directory but if you don't want to spend the $100 for the repair software (which admittedly may or may not help) you are limiting your own options.

     

    Directory corruption isn't too common anymore and if it did happen then the other question is why, which may hint that your drive itself is starting to fail.

  • by notcloudy,

    notcloudy notcloudy Aug 11, 2016 8:28 AM in response to glass two
    Level 4 (1,190 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 11, 2016 8:28 AM in response to glass two

    Confused - do you have the Mac Pro Silver Tower -- or an Imac.

     

    If its the Mac Pro you may have to change the battery that keeps the time - thats about the only thing that everything apple mentions to do if you have problems starting up.

     

    Also, even if you don't have a spinning wheel - just wait -- longest wait I saw on this user site - few hours to get to the desk top.

    Once the desktop comes up - restart until the desktop comes up clean.

     

    Apple is really bad when it comes to letting you know what is going on - I did a hardware check with estimated 30 minutes and it actually took 90 -- most of the time the progress line did not move.