My Mac won't boot past white screen and startup keys won't work

Question

My Mac won't boot past white screen and startup keys won't work

Hello. I have an iMac not sure what year.

So about a year ago it froze and wouldn't restart, so I neglected it for a year. Now that this my only fixable Mac I have been researching to fix it. I was able to boot into safe mode about a week ago for a little bit but then it froze again. Ever since then none of the startup keys work, even resetting the PRAM, I heard the second ding and then it just brings up the cursor on the white screen with no disk options.

I have an external disk drive connected to the USB I'd like to boot my Mountain Lion from but since the start up keys don't work I don't know how to do that.

Any help would be incredible, I do not care about saving anything from the computer I just want it to work. I hate dealing with the "geniuses" so that's not an option.

Thanks

iMac

Posted on Dec 13, 2013 7:27 AM

Reply

Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,484 points

Dec 13, 2013 7:52 AM in response to TheNamesRyder

When you hear the startup tone hold down the Option key and you should be able to boot into the Recovery Partition if you have Lion, Mt. Lion or Mavericks on the internal HD. If even the Option key does not work then your keyboard may have dead batteries or be defective and in need of replacement.

If you have ML on the EHD as a bootable clone then you should be able to boot from it.

My best guess is you have a failed HD though, my advice is to take it in for professional diagnosis to your local Apple Store or AASP and get a quote on what is wrong then decide how you want to proceed.

Reply