Q: My imac (2010 running Lion) gets stuck on a white screen with a gray apple and rotating circle. What can I do?
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Apr 20, 2012 7:52 AMby Ralph Landry1,See the startup Troubleshooting knowledge base article and see if this helps.
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Apr 20, 2012 10:29 AMby bogie26144,I looked those over but was hoping you could give me a "press this button when you hear the chime" type response... It just sits there with the rotating circle, pretending to do something but never getting anywhere. I tried holding down Shift and Control R... nothing changed.
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Apr 20, 2012 10:36 AMby Ralph Landry1,While you say you have a 2010 iMac, Apple does say for those symptoms with a 2011 iMac you should do a software update to the graphic firmware per http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3824 try a safe mode startup, holding the shift key, and see if you can do the software update.
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Apr 20, 2012 10:39 AMby Ralph Landry1,Safe Mode is discussed more fully in this knowledge base article.
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Apr 20, 2012 10:43 AMby ds store,bogie26144 wrote:
I tried holding down shift when it was booting and it brought up a gray bar which began to fill and then mysteriously disappeared.
So the progress bar completed? If so reboot normally and see if that fixes it.
If not hold the Shift key again to see if you can get in. If you do, backup your User files folders off the machine to a storage drive as soon as possible and disconnect.
Do not setup a TimeMachine or connect it or have it connected at this time.
Next if that doesn't work, hold the command and r keys and reboot, you should enter Lion Recovery with Disk Utilily being a option, use that to First AId > Repair Disk.
If it says anything, tell us. If it fixes something, run it again.
See Gray, White and Blue screen issues here
Cheat sheet to help diagnose and fix your Mac
See data recovery if you don't have any recent backups of your Users files off the machine
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Apr 20, 2012 10:44 AMby bogie26144,The progress bar started. I think it finished the first time, but it still never got past rotating thingy. I just tried the shift again, and the progress bar started, it's super slow but seems to be progressing. I'll post again if I get into any other screen. It's been 3 min. and still less than 1/3 progressed. The machine is backed up to a hard drive and the cloud. I'm not worried about losing data.
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Apr 20, 2012 10:54 AMby bogie26144,Ok, first thank you for helping me! Second here is another problem I have. I replaced my keyboard because the keys were broken and it didn't have a number pad. My new keyboard doesn't have a "command" key. I have a CTRL, a key with a picture of four wavy squares or an ALT key in the lower right corner. I have tried holding down those with an "R" and nothing seems to happen. Also, we recently moved so I'm not sure where the original disk went... or what it even looked like. I just remember it was all set up on the machine already. It's in some random box but I don't even remember what the software disk packaging even looked like I have ILive, and Office for mac software boxes... but was it just a disk in a little paper wrapper? What does the disk say on it?? No idea. Thanks again for helping, it is much appreciated.
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Mar 11, 2013 7:05 PMby Reschool,Hi guys,
I've just experienced white screen OD and no spinning "gear" or apple logo.
I tried every combo to get it to work again.
I disconnected everything from the back of my iMac 2010 and viola! Booted up first time. It may be one of the 12 or so USB devices I had plugged in.
It's like nothing went wrong, it just popped up a dialogue box that said, "your mac was restarted because of a problem. Report/ignore." So of course I reported it.
