What do I do when only the grey screen appears on my Mac desktop?
When turning on computer it will only get to grey screen after the chime.
i mac, Mac OS X (10.4.8)
Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
When turning on computer it will only get to grey screen after the chime.
i mac, Mac OS X (10.4.8)
The dark gray Apple is loaded off your boot Drive. If you are not getting that, your Boot drive is in trouble.
Try Safe Mode: Hold down shift at Startup and wait five minutes while it does a Disk Utility (Repair disk), then invites you to login with your username and password, even if you normally auto login.
If no joy, Hold down Alt/Option key at Startup, wait a minute while it finds all potentially-bootable Volumes, choose Recovery_HD if available and use Disk Utility to (Repair Disk) manually.
The dark gray Apple is loaded off your boot Drive. If you are not getting that, your Boot drive is in trouble.
Try Safe Mode: Hold down shift at Startup and wait five minutes while it does a Disk Utility (Repair disk), then invites you to login with your username and password, even if you normally auto login.
If no joy, Hold down Alt/Option key at Startup, wait a minute while it finds all potentially-bootable Volumes, choose Recovery_HD if available and use Disk Utility to (Repair Disk) manually.
update your profile to reflect mac model and OS more clearly.
You might want to search out for the OS X and iMac Communities.
Mac OS X Forum
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os?view=discussions
The more backup sets you have the better. And some basic knowledge of system maintenance.
http://www.apple.com/support/macbasics/
Isolating Issues in Mac OS
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1388
https://www.apple.com/support/osx/
https://www.apple.com/support/quickassist/
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/help/
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/tour/
Get Help with your Product
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304725
Apple Mac App Store
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_app_store/using_mac_apple_store
How to Buy Mac OS X Mountain Lion/Lion
http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/
TimeMachine 101
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
http://www.apple.com/support/timemachine
Mac OS X Community
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os
Recovery Mode
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
ExpressLane
https://expresslane.apple.com/
Startup Manager: How to select a startup volume
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT131
Startup Key combination: here is the old list:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343
Startup Key combinations new list
Troubleshooting: My computer won't turn on
https://support.apple.com/kb/TS1367
How to Clone a Volume
Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy
See also Erasing a Drive, How and Why to Partition a Drive, RAID.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone.html
Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107393
What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X) - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564
Creating a temporary user to isolate user-specific problems:
Isolating an issue by using another user account
Identifying resource hogs and other tips:
Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used
Starting the computer in "safe mode":
Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?
To identify potential hardware problems:
General Mac maintenance:
How to install OS X on a new or faulty HD without Internet recovery
Corrupt and new disks might not have a working Recovery partition, but there are still ways to access one and reinstall OS X, if needed.
Thanks so much. That fixed the problem.
If you do not have current Backups, you should use this "near-death experience" to convince yourself to buy a large-ish External drive (two to three times the size of your data) and do at least Time Machine backups. USB-2 is too slow for daily data, but fine for backups, and the enclosures are cheap.
Yes that was the suggestion of our son too. Thanks again.
What do I do when only the grey screen appears on my Mac desktop?