Grey screen problems - the spinning beachball strikes again

Question

Grey screen problems - the spinning beachball strikes again

Long story short, I have Macbook Pro mid 2012, Mountain Lion and it keeps crashing. I restore via Time Machine but invariably it'll freeze when I'm booted up and when I have to force-quit I get the spinning cogwheel when I restart. I've tried all the 'stuck on grey screen' suggestions but nothing's working. Also my Time Machine (an external hard drive) seems to be having problems as well - it sticks on 94mb backed up out of a few gb. All help gratefully received

Posted on Jul 11, 2014 11:47 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 11, 2014 1:49 PM in response to MikeSheffield

Go through the steps here Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup, but I suspect you need to do a clean install but this time don't migrate your data. It sounds like you are doing a full restore and bringing back the problems that are causing the crashing. Use Setup Assistant instead. http://pondini.org/OSX/SetupAsst.html

I suggest you use this opportunity to upgrade to Mavericks.

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Answer 2

Jul 11, 2014 2:47 PM in response to dianeoforegon

Thanks, I think you could be right that I'm bringing back the problem, so I'll try the Setup Assistant. Currently my Time Machine is backing up and is stuck on 9.16gb of 311 gb and I know that when I try to close down everything will freeze. Also, downloads I get after the restore have the wrong date - they're dated 6 June 2014 instead of today (11 July). If you have any other brainwaves I'd be delighted to try them

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Answer 3

Jul 11, 2014 3:09 PM in response to MikeSheffield

If you have the free space on your Time Machine drive and it's formatted as GUID, then I would clone my internal drive. You can boot from the clone, erase the internal drive and install Mavericks as a clean install. It's easy to copy your data only from the clone to the new install. We can discuss getting the applications you need but doing it carefully to be sure they run under Mavericks.

Both of these applications can be used to create a clone.

SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/

CCC http://www.bombich.com/download.html

I have two articles you might find helpful.

Move your data to a new User or a new Mavericks partition

Create an OS X Mavericks Partition

**(Fair disclosure: NeedHelp4Mac is my site. I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.)

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