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Mavericks install=grey screen of death

While installing Mavericks my computer restarted to a grey screen and never went any further. After 2 hours I rebooted and still the same. I tried holding the option key to boot off an exterior backup but no screen. Safe mode and recovery mode also brought back the grey screen.

Mac Mini 2.4 gHz, 8 gigs ram.

Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3), 8 gigs ram

Posted on Oct 22, 2013 6:46 PM

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Posted on Oct 22, 2013 7:04 PM

I reset the PRAM it is now intalling Mavericks. 47 minites and we will see.

11 replies

Oct 23, 2013 6:23 PM in response to MacGoog

Mine was stuck with a grey screen, too. (Could move arrow with track pad, but nothing else).


So I did a hard reboot (hold down power key for 5 seconds), reset PRAM (command option p r), and then it came up fine (spinning thingy, upgrade progress bar, auto-reboot with grey spinney thing again, black, bling! grey apple + spinney, success!).


Not sure if it mattered that I had a DVD in the DVD drive (not software--Captain America).

Oct 28, 2013 7:19 AM in response to Poicale

PRAM “parameter random-access memory” its a small part of your memory that stores certain settings in a location that OS X can access quickly. The settings include your designated startup disk, display resolution, speaker volume, and information on a kernel panic. Resetting PRAM may change some system settings and preferences. Use System Preferences to restore your settings. These settings on ocasion get corupt from long power outage or a major system update.


  1. Shut down the computer.
  2. Turn on the computer.
  3. Immediately press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears. Continue holding the keys down until the computer restarts, and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
  4. Release the keys.


Hope fully all is well. Before doing this I will assume you have tried to restart and used Disk Utility in your Applications/Utility folder and Repair Disk Permissions.

Nov 6, 2013 1:14 PM in response to MacGoog

Happened to us as well -- we're in an installation death spiral on a MBP purchased new in 2009. We attempted to install Mavericks. Mavericks took away the old operating system and then failed to install itself, going into a continual death spiral where it just keeps trying to install. We have taken it to the apple store and they said it looked like a disk failure. But the computer had been fine up until the install. We have tried turning it into a transfer disk to remove files, but although it will go into firewire transfer mode, no other computers will recognize it as such.


The disk image looks fine, but the disk utility says we have errors and will not let us fix the errors. Computer was running fine before the attempted Mavericks install. Now it is a very expensive paper weight on my desk.


Apple?!?!? Help? This is just a bad hard drive, something is happening to a lot of your faithful users.

Jan 4, 2014 4:57 PM in response to MacGoog

Yeah there is no real fix for mavericks yet. I tried calling and getting support, and I also took it to the Apple store. I even told the customer help through the phone, "all you are telling to do I have already tried", he then told me to just wait it out till mavericks comes out with a couple of more updates. The Apple Store wanted me to buy some kind of logic board for 200 bucks and something else for 800 bucks because they think it might be the graphics card or the whole mac might be messed up. I was like no way. So the only way to use my computer was to go into safe mode, but that got old fast because it also had some kind of thick squiggly white lines going through the whole mac screen. Safe mode dont allow time up machine to back anything. So what I did was save what I wanted manually. Then at start up, when restarting the mac, I held down the option key to go into startup manager. I went into disk utility and erased my whole mac hard drive. Then I went back to the main start up manager screen and installed the good old stressing Mavericks. It finally worked, mavericks installed perfectly. I guess mavericks, for some macs, installs correctly when it is a brand new empty hard drive. Then it took a while to install and add all my old stuff, but now i can go back and use my lovely mac, I love me mac it makes my life easier. This worked for me hopefully it works for some others out there. This was a painful and time consuming week, and all thanks to mavericks. I had my iMac for just about 4 years and no problems, until good old Mavrericks. đź‘ż

Mavericks install=grey screen of death

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