iMac won't boot past grey logo screen

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Level 1

14 points

iMac won't boot past grey logo screen

20" iMac was acting very slow, to the point where I would get the rainbow ball if I opened the HArd Drive icon.
Revolted but couldn't get past the grey logo screen and spinning wheel. Tried a Disk Repair from the Snow Lep disc but it just froze up.
I restored from my Time Machine drive and 24 hours later it's still the same. Getting ready to bring it to the genius bar unless anyone has an idea!

intel iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Oct 24, 2010 5:42 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 25, 2010 12:07 AM in response to Rob Lichter

HI Rob,

Check to see how much space is available on the startup disk. Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure you always have a *minimum of 10% to 15% free disk space at all times.*

If your iMac freezes before you can view that information, boot from your install disc like you did with disk repair only this time look at the bottom of the Disk Utility window. You'll see Capacity and Available.

Since you can't boot from the install disc, you could try booting in Safe Mode

If you can boot into Safe Mode, launch Disk Utility from the Applications/Utilities folder. You can verify the startup disk in Safe Mode, but you can't repair in Safe Mode but at least you'll know if there's a problem with the startup disk.

Carolyn 🙂

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Answer 2

Rob Lichter Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 25, 2010 10:56 AM in response to Rob Lichter

I have 100gb out of 500gb free. I cannot get to the desktop at all and my HD is in red when I launch Disk Utility from the install disc.

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