Spinning ball on startup

Hi Keith.

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.

One way to test is to 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, Test for problem in Safe Mode...

PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive

Reboot, test again.

If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some hardware problem like Video card, (Quartz is turned off in Safe Mode), or Airport, or some USB or Firewire device, or 3rd party add-on, Check System Preferences>Accounts (Users & Groups in later OSX versions)>Login Items window to see if it or something relevant is listed.

Check the System Preferences>Other Row, for 3rd party Pref Panes.

Also look in these if they exist, some are invisible...

/private/var/run/StartupItems

/Library/StartupItems

/System/Library/StartupItems

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons

/Library/LaunchDaemons

I am having the same(?) problem, but is also unable to safe boot, as my wireless keyboard won't seem to communicate with the mac before it's turned on. So in short; my mac "starts up" white screen, startup sound), but them goes to have the apple symbol and keeps loading (for hours if I let it..)

Any ideas?

Hello,

I don't know a way around this without a cheap USB KB at least to try. 😟