Another mysterious variation on the dreaded grey screen.... Help!

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Another mysterious variation on the dreaded grey screen.... Help!

Hi guys from Ireland, where it's currently raining.

I have a fairly old Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2Gb of RAM on board. It's trying to run Lion 10.7.3.....

I've never had a moment's trouble even after the Lion upgrade, but yesterday it froze, and on hard boot I got the dreaded grey screen.

I have a partitioned Firewire HD with a backup of the internal HD on one of them, and a copy of Snow Leopard on the other. I also have a USB Lion recovery HD.

Went into safe boot, and tried to restart from both Lion backup and Snow Leopard. Result - the same grey screen after the chime and Apple logo. Safe boot works fine, and I can still connect to the Net via an Ethernet cable linked to the Airport Extreme as wi-fi is disabled in this mode. But if I try to restart via safe boot, I get the same grey screen.

If I hold down the ALT key, I get the menu including the recovery HD, but selecting this results in - you've guessed - the grey screen.

I've faithfully followed Apple's advice (disconnect peripherals/disable Bluetooth mouse and keyboard/zap the PRAM etc.).

So I downloaded a fresh version of Lion from the App Store overnight and installed it this morning. Restarted and got - a grey screen.

I have also checked the internal MBP HD via Disk Utility and OnyX. Both give it a clean bill of health. I have also repaired permissions several times.

At this point I seem to be running out of options. I don't understand why the MBP will boot into safe boot with the shift key held down, and will function with most programs in that mode. But neither the internal HD nor Lion and Snow Leopard on the back-up Firewire HD will boot properly.

This is a fairly common problem judging by the amount of discussion on grey screens. My question is whether there's something in Lion which is preventing boot-up (but Snow Leopard doesn't work either), or do I have a hardware problem which the diagnostics are not picking up?

Help and TIA!

Best

Alex

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), Firewire backup of LIon and SL.

Posted on May 9, 2012 4:41 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

May 9, 2012 4:48 AM in response to corkflor

scan your drive media for bad sectors

Shift key disables loading 3rd party extensions for one thing.

Boot in Safe Mode

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Answer 2

corkflor Author

Level 1

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May 9, 2012 8:44 AM in response to The hatter

Thanks for the advice. I downloaded a small free program which again gave me an all-clear on the internal HD. Within SMART parameters.

What intrigues me is that I can load Lion and Snow Leopard from the BU HD in safe boot mode, but neither will boot up on restart from safe boot. Just the old grey screen after the Apple logo and revolving progress doohickey. All three boot disks can't be bad.

So it's something within the MBP itself.......

Best

Alex

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Answer 3

etresoft

Level 8

46,318 points

May 9, 2012 10:12 AM in response to corkflor

How old is this machine? Notebook hard drives will often fail at or near three years of age. If you are experiencing typical hard drive failure symtoms (and you are), and your machine is three years old, which I think it is, you probably need a new hard drive. New hard drives cost about $ 50 US and take 5 minutes to install. As long as you are buying things, get some more RAM too. it will be like getting a new machine.

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Answer 4

corkflor Author

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May 9, 2012 12:43 PM in response to etresoft

It's pretty elderly - must be five or six years old, though it's basically been used as a desktop on a plinth with a couple of integral cooling fans underneath. As I said, no problems at all before this major one.

You say an internal HD failure may be imminent, and you're probably right that now's a good time to swap and add further RAM. But why then are the diagnostics reporting that all is OK with the internal HD, and why aren't my relatively young back-up drives booting up as they should?

I'll take it in for a service check tomorrow and let you know what transpires. Thanks for the advice.

Best

Alex

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Answer 5

etresoft

Level 8

46,318 points

May 9, 2012 1:56 PM in response to corkflor

corkflor wrote:

But why then are the diagnostics reporting that all is OK with the internal HD

Diagnosics are only definitive indicators of failure. If they say the drive is dead, it is definitely dead. If they say the drive is good, and the drive is old, and acts as if it is dead, then the drive is dead. Plus, internal drives are so cheap and easy to swap out that it is virtually can't-go-wrong fix.

why aren't my relatively young back-up drives booting up as they should?

If the internal drive has seriously failed, it might prevent the machine from booting at all. I know it boots in safe mode, but things are obviously flaky. You can always pull the internal drive and see if it boots fine from the external drives. If so, that that is definitely the problem, regardless of safe mode behaviour.

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