I downloaded and installed Lion, everything seemed to have gone ok with the installation. But, when my computer restarted, it got stuck on a grey screen with the apple logo... Why won't my computer start up?? And how can I fix it?
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
The following support article is somewhat outdated. Where it refers to booting from an installation disc, you should boot from your recovery partition (if running 10.7 or later) by holding down the key combination command-R at the chime.
What appeared is not the regular apple start up grey screen, it's a screen with a fabric-like pattern. Instead of a regular start up apple logo, it's a debossed logo appearing near the top centre of the screen. I can move the mouse around on the screen but can't click on anything (there being nothing active to click on). I'm not sure if the regular rebooting command+R is the right solution fo this?
Like this......
......but with an apple logo? That's the Lion login background, question is why your details don't appear also.
Here you go found a better one.
Do you have backups of all your data?
I believe, and you might of missed it, that there was a message prior to install that read this will take several minutes - do not turn off your computer. I remember I got the same screen, and I was very tempted to thinking somehting was wrong when I installed Lion because I saw the grey screen for several moments, and my first reaction was that I should force the computer to restart... but I held back my impulse and everything worked out fine. It was in its final stage of finnishing the install. Unfortnately you sound like you acted on your impulse and did restart the computer. I would recomend you try two things, start the computer holding down the shift key... then restart the computer holding down the command + R keys this way you can finish reinstalling Lion.
A friend of mine and I solved this finally... we changed a file name in Library/preferences, I believe. And also disabled auto login. I'm not sure which solution was the right one, I'm just really glad the problem is solved.
For the sake of others who may find this thread, the file to be deleted is
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
URGENT!!! Upgraded to Lion, but computer won't restart
