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Gray screen & will not start up.

Hi,


I have tried everything from starting in safe mode to installing original RAM to using disk utiltiy from start up disc and i can't get my iMac to get past the gray screen with the spinning (all gray) icon. Now it isn't recognizing any keyboard touches and won't eject the disc in the drive.


It just sits there spinning the icon or shuts down after trying to start up.

I've tried everthing it says here: //http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570 but nothing is working.


Any ideas?



(I started another discussion with this topic but i forgot to put the right title on it)


Thanks.

iMac (20-inch Late 2006), Mac OS X (10.6.8), 4 GB RAM, ILife '11

Posted on Nov 27, 2012 7:30 AM

Reply
29 replies

Nov 27, 2012 12:54 PM in response to James Phoenix

Hi James, I get nothing at the link...


https://discussions.apple.com/support.apple.com/kb/TS2570


So not sure what you tried.


Does holding Mouse button down at powerup eject the Disc?


Is this a USB KB/Mouse, or Wifi?


Off hand I'd say it's a serious HW problem, most likely the Hard Drive. 😟


Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)...


http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

Nov 28, 2012 5:31 AM in response to BDAqua

Hi,


Thanks for the replies. I am using my fathers computer in his house to access the intenet so my replies will be delayed some.

My keyboard and mouse are bluetooth wireless. I'm trying to get ahold of wired ones.


This is the page for things tried: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570

It's basically disconnecting external devices, safe boot, reset of NVRAM/PRAM, disk utility from snow leopard disc and original which is the one stuck now, removed third party RAM and checked cables/power sources.


With the startup disc i used disk utility to verify disk and it couldn't due to an error. It said to start up the computer with MAC OS X installation disc. Tried that and it said "1 volume could not be reparied because of an error".


Now it won't eject the disc and it won't go any further than the gray screen with apple logo and spinning icon.

It just shuts down. Holding mouse button down doesn't do anything. Neither does holding down the various keys at startup.


It is an intel mac but i can't reset the SMC as i can't access anything. All i can do is power it up and then it shows me the gray and some progress bars which don't progress and shuts down.


Thanks.

Nov 29, 2012 12:38 AM in response to James Phoenix

Does it boot to Single User Mode, CMD+s keys at bootup, if so try...


/sbin/fsck -fy


Repeat until it shows no errors fixed.


(Space between fsck AND -fy important).


Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck...


http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214


Just recently I ran into a problem when I tried to Verify my hard disk and when it tried to verify the catalog, it responded "Invalid sibling link." Repair Disk didn't work. I searched the web and Apple's site, and couldn't find anything useful except to buy DiskWarrior or reformat the drive. Knowing that OS X is built on Unix gave me a few clues on how to proceed. The solution is pretty simple:

  1. Boot off the OS X CD (reboot, hold C while booting).
  2. The installer will load up, go to Utilities in the menu and run Terminal.
  3. Type df and look for the drive that has your Mac system mounted---you'll have to unmount this. On my MacBook Pro, it was /dev/disk0s2.
  4. Type umount /dev/disk0s2, replacing disk0s2 with whatever disk your OS lives on.
  5. Type fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s2. If you umounted the wrong thing, it will complain that you can't repair a mounted drive. Go back and umount the right thing and repeat this step.

Just for fun, you might want to run another fsck_hfs on your disk (use the -f option because your drive is probably journaled). Hope this helps someone so they don't buy a program that's going to do pretty much what we did with fsck_hfs, and so they don't waste time searching for an answer to no avail. By the way, TechTool Deluxe (3.1.1) didn't find the Catalog problem for some reason (you'll have this on a CD if you have AppleCare), which is why I resorted to fsck.


http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070204093925888

Dec 2, 2012 9:40 AM in response to James Phoenix

Hi,


So i have got a wired mouse and board and got the disc out with no problems.


I have tried pretty much everything now including the single user mode thing you posted.

It always says says error and will not correct it each time.


I used the disk management tool to try and repair the disk but it was unable to complete and still says 'volume needs repair'. So i just did and erase and install on the drive and then did a system restore using time machine which it said was successful but then it would not restart and gave me the gray screen again!

So once more i did a erase and install and tried to install snow leopard but it would not restart!


Now i have it with the basic Tiger OS X which works but everything takes a lifetime to do. Starting up or shutting down takes 2 or 3 minutes. Opening applications such as safari or iphoto has a really bad time delay. Even typing is a time consuming exercise. You type a few words and it has to catch up.


I tried dragging and dropping files to my hard or flash drives and it does it okay.

I tried using text edit and saving what i wrote and it did that okay too.


I have tried pretty much everything i can think of or what i can see on the web.


Any ideas where i can go from here?


Thanks.

Dec 2, 2012 11:35 AM in response to James Phoenix

See if the Disk is issuing any S.M.A.R.T errors in Disk Utility...


http://support.apple.com/kb/PH7029



Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?


How much RAM & free space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.


Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.


In the Memory tab of Activity Monitor, are there a lot of Pageouts?


Is Spotlight still trying to Index the drives?

Dec 2, 2012 2:27 PM in response to BDAqua

Hi,


a lot of that is over my head so here is what i do and do not understand.


Checked disc utility and it has no messages for s.m.a.r.t.


As for the 'all processes/CPU' i don't know what I'm looking for there.


I have 4GB of RAM and the hard drive is empty with 229GB of 250GB.


Console log looks normal with no repeating messages.


In memory tab, what's a pageout?


And i don't know what you mean with spotlight indexing the drive, sorry.


Thanks.

J.

Dec 5, 2012 10:28 AM in response to James Phoenix

Okay so I'm now back at the gray screen.


I managed to securely erase the hard drive by writing it all with zero's.


After that i installed tiger once again and all seemed well. There was no spinning wheels, no delays nothing.

Everything worked fine. So i tired to install snow leopard but it failed. After that i just tried to install the updates to get things back to normal but that won't work either.


I'm just back to the gray screen with it stalling there and then restarting.

It's not even starting up now. I'm back where i started 10 days ago.


Help!

Gray screen & will not start up.

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