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User profile for user: Dyslexik18
Dyslexik18 Author
User level: Level 1
10 points

Mac not booting up

Despite my revelations last week thinking I'd solved my freezing mac by throwing out the time capsule! It lasted 2 days when I woke it from sleep, checked an email(from a known source so no thought of viruses) then tried to change pages on safari the mac stopped responding and the beach ball appeared. After 25 mins of that I powered it off and attempted a restart.....nothing, 40 mins of watching the spinning gear under the apple sign. I then tried a safe start and the apple sign changed to a No Entry sign above the spinning gear. I'm guessing that it's a fairly serious problem but thought I'd put it out there in case there was a simple explanation.


4 year old iMac, intel chip, 4gb ram running Lion.

Posted on Apr 10, 2012 4:15 AM

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6 replies
User profile for user: Linc Davis
Linc Davis
User level: Level 10
209,547 points

Apr 10, 2012 5:46 AM in response to Dyslexik18

Most likely your boot drive has failed, or you have some other hardware fault. If you care about the last three days' worth of data, you should try to back up, if possible, before you do anything else. Don't overwrite any previous backup, because the files may be corrupt.


There are several ways to back up a Mac that is unable to fully boot. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.


1. Boot from your recovery partition (10.7 or later), a local Time Machine backup volume (10.7.2 or later), or your installation disc (10.6.8 or earlier.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in the support article linked below, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.”


How to back up and restore your files


2. If you have a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire ports, boot the non-working Mac in target disk mode by holding down the key combination command-T at the startup chime. Connect the two Macs with a FireWire cable. The internal drive of the machine running in target mode will mount as an external drive on the other machine. Copy the data to another drive.


How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode


3. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.

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User profile for user: ds store
ds store
User level: Level 7
30,725 points

Apr 10, 2012 11:09 AM in response to Dyslexik18

Dyslexik18 wrote:


...the spinning gear under the apple sign. I then tried a safe start and the apple sign changed to a No Entry sign above the spinning gear.


Cant' fix the drive.



You have Lion, hold command and r keys and reboot into Recovery HD partition and use Disk Utiltiy to repair the drive or install Lion onto a external drive


If it's not seen on the left, it's likely dead, or the cable to it or the Mac, hard to determine until they pull it out and put it into a adapter to read it.



Review your data recovery options here


https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3172


others


https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents

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Mac not booting up

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