Q: iMac white screen of death
Hi everybody,
Since I have had this problem for a while now and searched forums online extensively I am positive that my issue has not been resolved in any other thread I know of. I hope that someone here might be able to help me. I have iMac 27 inch from 2011 (EMC2429) running El Capitan suffering from white screen of death.
The problems started with chrashes during online video playback. I formatted and made several clean installs of both El Capitan and Snowleopard. From being intermittent the problems are now more consistent. While I at this moment never have problems using the computer if I get it to start, from time to time it will not boot properly even after several attempts of restart. In detail: I start the iMac up; white screen for a short while; the logo comes on and when the progress bar reach about 50 % I get a white screen for a minute or two, then spontaneous restart and we're in a loop. I used to think that this issue was predictable since the problem is persistent when it do start to occur, but I have been fooled a couple of times. Upon turning it in to a genuis bar and had it checked and "cleaned" it worked for a while but the problem was not remedied. A while after that I recently changed the hard drive and I thought the problem was finally solved, until today. As I am writing this post while trouble shooting to give you the latest symptoms, the computer finally made a successful boot. Most of the times (as I now have to phrase it) I cannot boot into safe mode - before I could and it momentarily fixed the problem - now I cannot finish internet recovery or boot from an external drive. I can start in verbose mode as well as single user mode every time though. That's maybe the only thing I can say for certain as the issue keeps changing, which also makes it so difficult to describe.
I have tried to boot without RAM as well as checking the RAM one by one and one time when the iMac is acting up and won't boot properly after several tries. While changing the hard drive I discovered that the computer was quite dusty on the inside. I will buy some compressed air an try to clean it. After that I am out of options. I guess there might be an issue with the logic board but I got the 5 (?) beeps without the RAM installed. That leaves us (at least to my knowledge) with the GPU. This model is infamous for it's potential issues with the graphics card (I should know the brand and model of it but I have not written it down and google gives me several different answers) but I have not experienced glitches and artifacts like other users have and GPU does not seem to act up when I put it under stress. I have seen black and white stripes over the screen upon booting the last time the computer had a fit.
I am determined to try and fix this computer myself - partly because I have no money to send it to a repair shop and partly because I like the challenge (at the moment) - and any tips are highly appreciated.
Posted on Sep 22, 2016 12:15 PM