HELP! My 27" Intel iMac Just Blue Screened...

Hi ku4hx, the only thing I have been able to do is run Apple Hardware test, the extended version, which took 3 hours and came back with "no trouble found". So, I assume the problem is software. I haven't gotten a single error messages since the initial blue screen, which has changed to a grey ever since. I have had no operational issues before this event, other than a corrupt Safari that has been taken over by some kind of overlay. History: I bought this all-in-one when there were no other options for running an Avid Recording Studio, other than way out-of-date Power Macs. The Apple phone salesman said it had sufficient horsepower to run all of my AV apps without any problems. He was wrong, for it wouldn't run Avid Media Composer, Avid Symphony, Pro Tools, Final Cut, etc. Even one of Apple's high level tech support people told me that their salesman should never have sold much less recommended this iMac to me, because it's nothing more than a glorified notebook computer with a big display. Unfortunately, Apple wouldn't let me return it so I wasted nearly 4K on a computer that I have only been able to use for email correspondence with my 8k+ clients since it's purchase in 2011. To add insult to injury, now it went blue screen without any warning. Yes, I have tried to Safe Boot several times with no success. The only thing I see from time to time is a globe that spins slowly. I have never seen a mac that won't let me access Disk Utility in Safe Mode. Is there a backdoor way to bypass the OS so I can at least clone the drive? Paul

iMac 27": Sep 2011

MacOS: High Sierra. Ver: 10.13.6

Process: 3.4 GHz, Intel Core i7

RAM: 32GB 1333 Mhz DDR3

Graphic: AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB (2560x1440)

Serial:

Thanks K for all the links. It seems that every solution I find, involves starting the computer in Safe Mode by pressing the start button on the back on my 2011 mid year iMac and then immediately holding the Shift button. Unfortunately, that trigger doesn't work for some reason. CMD + R doesn't trigger the macOS Recovery feature either. Do you know of any other way to enter safe mode? Perhaps I can load the OS onto an external thumb drive? I did see what looked like a recovery screen the second time I tried rebooting the computer, which gave me the ability to choose reinstall High Sierra 10.13.6. But, when I rebooted I got the same grey screen with the Apple logo and progress bar. My only progress so far has been stopping the constant reboot every time the progress bar on the Apple logo screen is about half way. The unexpected change occurred after I ran the Apple Hardware Test twice (short & extended version), so I guess that helped. Both runs of AHT, returned no hardware issues. I wish there was a way to initiate a hard drive sector and repair scan, from outside of the OS, in case the AHT wasn't thorough enough to catch everything. If any ideas come to mind, I'm all ears! Thanks a million, Paul

Hi K,

Forgot to mention that every time I try to start up in Safe Mode, the Apple logo appears and the seemingly endless progress bar slowly creeps from left to right. In other words, it doesn't stop when it reaches the far right hand end of the bar, because I can clearly hear computer activity in the background as if the OS is installing something. Could that be a continuation of the OS 10.13 High Sierra reinstall that I initiated days ago the 2nd time restarted the computer and saw the macOS Recovery panel and chose the OS Reinstall? Should I let it run for a few hours or manually shut it off and try to start up from macOS Recovery again? Thanks a million, Paul

Hi Keith,

Yes, I am using a wired keyboard to make sure the commands are being received. In fact, I just swapped out the full size keyboard for the short Apple keyboard, in case the full size board might be faulty. Both keyboards are wired. Thanks for that tip, Paul

Hi Keith,

Well, swapping wired keyboards didn't help for pressing and holding the Shift key after restarting the computer still doesn't enter Safe Mode, nor does restarting and pressing Option, Cmd, and the R key enter macOS Recovery. Is it possible to install a basic version of High Sierra on a thumb drive and access Safe Mode or macOS Recovery from it? Or, do I need to install it on an SSD drive? There must be some kind of workaround that I can use. Let me know... Thanks again, Paul

Hi Keith,

Well, swapping wired keyboards didn't help for pressing and holding the Shift key after restarting the computer still doesn't enter Safe Mode, nor does restarting and pressing Option, Cmd, and the R key enter macOS Recovery. Is it possible to install a basic version of High Sierra on a thumb drive and access Safe Mode or macOS Recovery from it? Or, do I need to install it on an SSD drive? There must be some kind of workaround that I can use. Let me know... Thanks again, Paul

Hi K,

I have been trying every solution I can to create a bootable installer that I can put on a 32GB thumb drive, and boot up my 2011 27" Intel iMac so that I can run disk utility to try to repair it. But sadly, I just discovered that I cannot download High Sierra 10.13.6 onto a new iMac because Apple won't allow you to download an operating system that is older than the OS your computer came with, which is insane to say the least. In other words, I can't use a new M1 iMac to fix an older Intel iMac. Without a bootable OS installer, I can't even begin to utilize the ideas you suggested, so that I can retrieve client contact information, scheduling and data on nearly 10K clients. There must be some way to to get a copy of High Sierra 10.13.6 from somewhere. Please let me know if you have a reliable way to procure a copy of HS10.13.6. Thanks a million K! Paul

Oops, I forgot to mention that I tried your Option key idea and it generated two hard drives, one with the name Macintosh HD and the other one says Recovery-10.13.6. But once again, it goes so far and nothing happens. It accepted the network name and password, which allowed me to choose the Recovery-10.13.6 drive, and it returned to a grey page with the Apple logo in the middle, but that's as far as it went. I was left starring at a stationary Apple logo with no progress bar! Does that mean the Recovery partition empty? Thanks, Paul