Grey screen

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Level 1

4 points

Grey screen

Hi,

I'm on a iMac (27-inch, Late2012) with Catalina 10.15.5 and use a 'My Passport' for the Time Machine back-up - everything has been fine for years.

But the last few days on start-up I get a grey screen and nothing happens until I un-plug the 'My Passport', then life carries on as normal. I can plug it in again and do backups and everything is fine.

The Mac only has the original 2 memory modules and 2 empty ones.

Do I need to get a couple more memory modules?

If so which are best?

Many thanks

Posted on Jun 16, 2020 9:22 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,682 points

Jun 16, 2020 9:27 AM in response to lihou

I am surprised you have gotten as much life out of your Passport as you have as they have a very high failure rate. Good troubleshooting on your part, your WD drive is telling you it must be replaced. I would STRONGLY recommend using an OWC Mercury Elite Pro EHD to replace it, you can find them at www.macsales.com

If your computer is still operating with 8GB of RAM then I also strongly recommend upgrading to a minimum of 16GB. Because iMacs are very sensitive to using quality RAM please only use RAM from crucial.com or macsales.com. I would consider adding either 2 8GB DIMMs to the empty slots.

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