27-inch iMac Grey Screen of Death!~

I've tried to power down for several minutes, even unplugging the machine, and still when I try to reboot... Nothing.

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What I meant was, I kept it turned off for several minutes, to make sure there was no residual energy lingering around, and when I pressed the button to turn it on, still nothing. It won't get past this screen... of death! lol

Thank you for the reply! Ill try this when I get home from work, that is.. if I can find my disk.. lol!

Also, am I able to use my keyboard while the computer is in this state?! I have the wireless bluetooth keyboard that came with the computer... Im just assuming that the keyboard doesn't have a connection with the computer until it's been semi-started up...

I really hope this isn't the case, that its dead...

I have a lottaaa files on that computer. Im est. anywhere from 50-80,000 photos. I have a large collection over the years.

I spoke with Apple on the phone, and I need to call them back tmrw to further follow up on it.

Grrr, still frustrating, esp after spending $2100 for it.

... I know. Im in a pickle. I shloud have backed up alot sooner.

So i tried those steps that u mentioned, and alot of them made sense and i was able to follow them to a t.

i held c down, and waited for it to load. When that did, i opened du and selected my hd (macintosh hd) and then in the first aid tab, i seen a dialog field where the log is presented with four buttons at the bottom. Verify disk permissions. Repair disk permissions. Verfiy disk. Repair disk. Ive tried vefify disk. It went thru its thing and then in a green sentence in the log window. Then i exited back to utlities menu and u said to select startup manager, which i did not have. I did have startup disk.

I selected that...and a long skinny windown that is prompting me to select a method for booting up.

I have.. Mac os x 10.6.3 and another option for the dvd os and i see a network startup with a question mark icon.

I selected the mac os 10.6.3 and hit the restart button. And the system begins to restart. And then it clicks few times ( not loud tho) and begins to boot up. It comes to the gray screen, with the centered apple logo, and then a transition slides down the screen with an error message.

Even though im still stuck i did see a glimmer of hope. While i was fiddling around in the options, i selected the restore tab... And then half way down the page, i clicked 'image' , which then brings up a dialog window, its the explorer type thing to 'open' an image file. On the left side i see all my devices. I select my hd, then go to users, then down to my account, and i can then see all of my files and folders, but im unable to see any of them because the prompt window wants me to open a image file....

But im guessing all my files r still intact but im need to find a method to access them some how. Or get the sy/53m to boot properly.

Btw. Im typing all of this on my ipad. Ive had it for 3.5 days. Its a god send at this difficult time without my precious.

Any other ideas?

I have 13 gbs free.. *bites lip*

I did the method for restarting and holding down the cmd opt p and r, and it did make the computer restart and do the reboot sound, then the site tells you to take your fingers off those keys, it didnt load much after thst, because it went back to the original error screen... Gray screen of death.

Unfortunately, I do not have another MAC computer.

So I think I have solved this issue, but I am still left confused as to what the error message states as the culprit of the issue that caused my computer to crash, and display the error screen ( http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/9713/imacerror.jpg).

What I did was, after I tried all of those steps that you had offered, I was left feeling that I was getting so close, but just not close enough to solve the issue. So this is what I did,...

Pressed C upon startup, and waited for the next screen to load.

Instead of going to Disk Utility and Startup Disk, I processed on the main screen ahead of me, which re-installed the OS.

The information captions on these screens did not indicate that it would "leave" all current information intact while doing the re-install.

But I read somewhere that if I did proceed to Restore the OS, it would only OVER-WRITE the existing Snow Leopard OS Files, and leave all settings/files intact. After my research, I felt confident that this solution would bare good news, so I proceeded with the next few steps to re-install the OS. After I selected the Macintosh HD drive (I had about 13gbs free), I selected next and I let the process go. It took about 50 minutes for the process to complete, and then I was prompted with a restart button.

Restarted... and the computer rebooted back to the Login screen, with my ID still intact. Entered my password, and I was in. I was able to access all of my files, and I did a TIME MACHINE backup of the whole computer, which was 799 gbs of data.

I actually had to leave the house while it was doing this backup because I had to go to work. Im curious, once the TIME MACHINE is done backing up all of my data to the external 1TB drive, will I be able to open the external drive and view all the files as if any other external harddrive, or do I need to re-apply these files in a manner like restoring from a Time machine backup? I've never done this before, but Im thankful that Im able to backup all of my information...

Phew! - Scary day or so. Not to sound over dramatic, but I really would have been upset if I lost everything, esp after I bought a 1TB external HD a few weeks ago, for the purpose of backing everything up, but I just didn't find the time to do so,... which nearly bit me in the ***.

Carolyn I really want to thank you for all your help. You were a fantastic help with this situation, and I really appreciate your time and effort. Im very thankful that there are people like yourself, out there on the internet, on forums dedicated to situations like this, with your knowledge and patience! Thank you kindly!!!

--- if anyone could answer my question on the ablitiy to access files from time machine, that would be great!

-Travis
EastCoastCanada