after i boot up with the option key it shows the hard drive with an X. Am I screwed with this machine or is there some hope out there?
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5), not sure of os but early osx
Well, it doesn't sound good, see if this works...
Bootup holding CMD+r, or the Option/alt key to boot from the Restore partition & use Disk Utility from there to Repair the Disk, then Repair Permissions.
on normal boot it just shuts down after about 3 minutes without leaving the boot screen. Holding down the alt/opt key while booting it goes to a 3 icon screen (refresh/gmac5 hd/and forward arrow). There is a small green x on the corner of the hd icon. Gonna do what it takes to fix this just wondering if it is something within the scope of what i can do, or replacing HD and loading fresh os on it.
Hmmm, no Restore partition!?
See if this works...
Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions.
PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.
what happens if there is an x on the hard drive icon?
