Gray screen w/ pic of hard drive upon bootup & gobbledy-gook when typing

Sounds like your option key is stuck taking you to the hard drive icon. With the option key pressed during a restart you are able to choose what you want to bootup on. Let's say you have a install disk in your optical drive and a few bootable drives installed....here you can make a choice of which to boot on. Or your hard drive is having issues with the startup process.

I would try these basic repairs first which may help correct the general weirdness...

Try using Disk Utility to do a Disk Repair, as shown in this link, while booted up on your install disk.

You could have some directory corruption. Let us know what errors Disk Utility reports and if DU was able to repair them. Disk Utility's Disk Repair is not perfect and may not find or repair all directory issues. A stronger utility may be required to finish the job.

After that Repair Permissions.

No need to report Permissions errors....we all get them.

If that doesn't do it, post back!

 DALE

I always keep 'Console' in my dock: it's where the computer reports errors, and offers a door to your logs, for more information. The 'system.log' (/var/log) reports all important actions taken by MacOSX, and often why it took them.

Try this as well:

Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

The NVRAM tells your computer what disk to boot from. Just an electrical fluctuation can upset your NVRAM.

If your Option key is damaged (which is most likely), you can turn it off and map 'Option' instead to a key that does nothing significant. (An 'Option' key is important to have easy access to.)

PS Reset your PRAM and NVRAM. Boot from another disc, such as your install disc (which you must check your file system's integrity from anyway). While you're in the 'Utility' section, a menu choice after selecting your language, select 'Terminal'. Just type a sentence. Do the letters look correct? If not, you have a hardware problem (very unlikely), if correct you have a software problem. If your computer works fine, you had a firmware or file system problem.

K@tie,

Thank you for telling us you're all fixed. Few do.

If fixing the file system was enough, there was no need to continue. (Sorry refreshing your firmware damaged your file system, it would seem. Very strange.)

Bruce

PS You should correct your permissions after each upgrade or installation of a new application, and verify your file system's integrity at the same time. If the latter shows a problem, use your install disc to repair the file system.

K@tie wrote:
Thank you for your quick response!

You are welcome!

Nice to know there are kind and quick people out there.

These forums are full of them. That's what made me start trying to help out here years ago, to pay it back.

I did what you said - Disk Repair while booted up from the install disk - "No repairs were necessary" it then told me. I next ejected the install disk and booted up regularly - NO gray screen! Weird.

Even though +Disk Repair+ said it didn't find anything wrong, it still may have fixed small things to improve your startup process.

Then I repaired disk permissions and only got three minor errors which it repaired. So I think my poor aging Mac just needed to be reminded that I do love and value it still.

Yes, I would run both repairs about once a month, and the +Permissions Repair+ before and after you install anything including Apple updates, just to be safe.

Good Luck!

Dale