My MacBook pro won't start. It is frozen on the gray screen with the apple. Please help?

Reinstall OS X:

Reinstall Snow Leopard without erasing the drive

Do the following:

1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions

Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.

If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

2. Reinstall Snow Leopard

If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.

Download and install the Combo Updater for the version you prefer from support.apple.com/downloads/.

Reinstalling Lion Without Erasing the Drive

Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.

Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

Read this article from the Apple support pages:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570

Ciao.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3046

Is there a way to do this if I don't have the Snow Leopard installer disk?

Thanks.

BrooklynMac wrote:

Is there a way to do this if I don't have the Snow Leopard installer disk?

Kappy likely was tired when he pasted that massive canned paste.

What you need to do is hold the shift key down while booting, that will attempt repairs on the drive, also disable third party kext files in OS X.

If that gets you in, backup your users file folders to a external storage drive as soon as possible

go around and update all your third party software, any that you can't, you need to uninstall it.

reboot normally and see if that fixes your issue

if not, you can do what's called a Reinstall Just OS X method and yes you WILL need the 10.6 disk, either the machine specific disk that came with your computer or the 10.6.3 upgrade disk sold online.

If your machine came with 10.6.x then call Apple for "replacement machine specific disks" if you don't say that they send you the 10.6.3 disks that might not work

Ok? now you know what to do. read through this Link here "Gray, White or Blue Screen" issues

 Cheat sheet to help diagnose and fix your Mac

Hey ds -

Thanks for the response, and I realize I should have been more specific in my original request. I had tried beforehand safe boot, reset nvram and pram, reset smc, cmd+r, and safe boot with shift/ctrl/v. When doing the last I saw a message about "the system bootstrapped has crashed". And the disk drive on my MacBook is broken, hence my question about doing it without disk. I had found that cheat sheet separately and tried anything that seemed relevant. At any rate, made a genius bar appointment for tomorrow - I will check back and let you know what the findings were.

Thanks again for the quick response.