MacBook Pro won't go past grey screen with loading bar and wheel

I have a 2011 17 inch MacBook Pro. Love it to death. Whenever I have that gray screen come about. Which happens quite often now when I reboot my computer. Sometimes you're more stubborn than others. I cross reference the fix via online. I came across this helpful reply and I just wanted to say that the command V

Start with these two articles:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2570

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3353

Ciao.

If you recently did a update and rebooted, sometimes when the firmware is applied it will show a loading bar, if it can't update the firmware it might keep showing it. But if you didn't recently update, then this is not the problem.

In your case then the fsck drive check that runs when you first boot OS X has found a issue with the file structure of the drive and showed a loading bar because it was attemtping to fix it and failed. If you would have left the machine turned on, it should have shut itself off eventually.

So first you have to ask yourself. Do you have two forms of backup of your personal data off the machine?

If not, then your going to have to do this first to grab what you can. You can skip it, but your taking a risk.

Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive

The problem with only having TimeMachine as a backup is it's not bootable to verify you have access to your files, your basically taking a chance it's fine and if the corruption on the boot drive made it self over to the TM drive, it's corrupted as well.

If you have a bootable clone, then option key boot off that and check out your files are safe.

Most commonly used backup methods

If you do have a couple of copies of your data off the machine, then your ready to proceed with fixing your problem, which MAY require a comple erasure of the Macintosh HD partiton to fix if any of these fixes don't work first.

..Step by Step to fix your Mac

I can say this about your problem, it seems to be a issue with software retention on the drive and not necessarily hardware because your booting up the first portion of OS X that contains fsck, but it can't load later parts of itself for some reason.

It might be because there is a issue with the drive corrupting the data or it might be you moved the machine while it was running and it damaged sectors, or it might be that sectors failed just on their own.

If the Steps don't fix your issue, then your looking at a Zero Erase and Install, then restoring your files from the backups you have.

Erase, formatting, OS X installs on Mac's

Did you get an answer to this? My macpro just did the same thing.

Help!

I habe the same problem right now...

I too have had this issue. In my case, neither the safe bookt (shift while booting) recovery from OS recovery system (command R), resetting NVRAM (Option Command P R) , booting from a bootable CD or startup manager worked (option while booting). What did work was Verbose mode (command V). After a successful boot, it is wise to log in, allow all the start routines to complete, and then shutdown by command. In my case, it took longer than normal to shutdown but all was well from that point.

Same here it doesnt matter what you try to do in resolving this issue nothing seems to work.

I have this same problem right now. Funny how suddenly at the late end of the year there are lots of discussion groups about this very same thing now!? What's changed!? Mavericks!?

Does anyone have a step by step for dummies guide in English!!! (When I say English I mean in words the comman man will understand with just a gcse i.t. ) on how to sort this problem out? Or do I have to make an appointment at the Genius Bar with all the new apple bandwagon sheep!?

Thanks.

We had the same issue... did everything and did not go past the grey screen. We have apple's diagnostic server, and it could not boot to that. We found it was the hard drive cable that was not allowing the computer to carry on in it's boot process. Once we removed the cable, the computer went past the grey screen. Cheep fix.

Hi, had this problem for a week and trawled all the necessary online resources.

Did all the resets with nothing working before finally finding Mac's in-built recovery mode which reinstalls OSX without a disc (CMD & R) which seems to have solved my problem - fingers crossed!

This is simple, convenient and effective but maintains all of your existing config and has restored my confidence totally in Macs. In fact I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned on any of the many online resources that I found.

Just wanted to share cos I'm feeling so happy to have fixed it :)))

What's (CMD & R) in specific, as i am currently suffering with the same problems and have tried everything

Same problem on 2011 MB Pro with Mavericks. I had a whole lot of stuff attached through the USB ports. Both were feeding splitters with a variety of things such as a Matrox dual screen box, Bamboo tablet, passport drive and so on. I unplugged them all and the MB booted up fine.

Thank you,

ds store

I followed your steps and I was able to have my MacBook Pro up and running again.

Aleks

I has the same problem just now... It was fine two days ago, and when I turned it on just now, it won't get through the gray screen! I did the safe boot, and still nothing. It still gets stuck on the fray scray.. I don't know what to do! Please, can someone help? I have very important data in there that I need to work and I don't have access to it anymore :(

I also disconnected all devices that I was using at the time, and it still does not work... It has been like this for more than 10 minutes now...