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Gray screen of death at start up

Hello all,
Today when i was downloading the latest updates for my mac and iTunes my system froze while trying to access my BAD hard drive. So i restart my mac and after the apple logo appeared the gray screen of death showed up. I tried every thing from PRAM reset to disk and permission repair. So please help me with this problem.

Thank you

MacBook Pro 15-inch, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Nov 16, 2010 10:21 PM

Reply
13 replies

Nov 17, 2010 12:52 PM in response to bassamz

"i was trying to access it while updating mu system software.."

That's like running your car down the highway while you are doing an oil change. Disconnect the external hard drive. (You should have done this from the onset).
"I tried every thing from PRAM reset to disk and permission repair."

Did you try booting from your OS installer disk and running Repair Disk from Disk Utility?

Nov 18, 2010 11:37 PM in response to bassamz

The same thing happened to me on one of my machines. It is simple to fix. Use the Snow Leopard installation disk to reinstall the operating system. Just pop it in and follow the instructions. Don't worry. All you data and programs will be unaffected and will reappear exactly as they were before. Now use the software updater again. Everything will be fine from this point on.

Nov 19, 2010 2:28 AM in response to bassamz

Remove the bad hard drive from the equation. The gray screen can happen when the boot chip tries to access any drive that isn't in good condition. Now generally speaking it should jump to the next drive that is good, but it might not always.

See my backup FAQ* if you need to recover data:

http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html

- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Jan 20, 2011 1:52 PM in response to ivanortiz732

You need to hold down the 'C' key while you are starting up to get it to boot from the install DVD. It comes up with the first screen to select language, and you click on the arrow. The next screen has a big window to install the update, which comes up, and then about 30 seconds later a menu bar appears on the top of the screen -- which you won't see if you have already hit the "Continue" button on the install screen. When the menu appears, go under Utilities and launch Disk Utility and repair your disk. You may want to check to see if it boots at this point. If it does, you are done. If it doesn't boot, or you still are having other problems, then boot off the install DVD again, and this time hit continue to do the install. Since you have a later install on the disk, it will ask you if you want to archive and install or erase and install.

(To boot from the DVD, start from powered off. Put one finger on the 'C' key and hold it while you press and release the power key. You can let go of the 'C' key once it gets to the apple with the snaky wait cursor underneath.)

Mar 8, 2013 6:59 AM in response to rob.hudson

If you are on Mountain Lion you can boot from the Recovery Disk that is installed hidden from your internal HD. You can Use the Disk Utility from there to repair disk and you can also use that on OS re-installation of your ML.


"OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion includes a built in set of utilities in the Recovery System. Restart your Mac and hold down the Command key and the R key (Command-R), and keep holding them until the Apple icon appears, indicating that your Mac is starting up. After the Recovery System is finished starting up, you should see a desktop with a OS X menu bar and a "Mac OS X Utilities" application window."



Check this link


http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4718

Gray screen of death at start up

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