Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

The dreaded gray screen

OK ... I was crusing the net when apps in the background starting freezing. Worse, I couldn't force quit them as the cmd-opt-esc did nothing. I couldn't shut down thru the menu and, in the end, had to shut down by holding down the power-on button.

It rebooted into the Recovery disk. Natch, Disk Utilities (DU) was worthless. Gotta luv that useless dialog box that says backup your data when there's no way (or at least no way that I know of) from the Recovery screens.

Luckily ... I hope ... I hav DiskWarrior 4.4 on a bootable USB drive (that sumtimes works). This time it booted the laptop and DW rebuilt the harddrive that Disk Utility wouldn't touch. I could open the drive and see my files. There is a "Recovered Files" folder with a bunch of unix files in them. That doesn't giv me a warm fuzzy. No joy in Mudville. When I tried to boot off the HD, I got a screen full command line codes before it poppt up and told me to restart.

Back to the Recovery partition ... DU tell me the drive is ok. I boot off the external drive. Now it chooses to crash on me as well. Well, it wasn't all that reliabe anyway (the cable link at the drive port on the hard drive is loose).

I can see my HD ... fittingly named 'fubar' ... in DU. But it keeps telling me that its ok. Repaird permissions. That didn't help. Spent hours waiting as it install'd the OS over the net. Well, at least I'm not getting the kernal panic anymore but it does stop at the gray screen with the apple logo on it and goes no further.

I can boot into safe mode. But when I exit, it goes to the gray screen. I did catch a glimpse in the lines scrolling by of an SMC error (I think that is what is was). I rebooted with the cmd-opt-shift-power button to reset the SMC ... and yes, I reset the NVRAM as well. Still nothing.

I'm stumpt. And so y'all know ... I'm in a S. American country with no Apple support. No genius bar, no overnight deliveries from Alsoft or anything like that.

Any thoughts of what I might look for while I'm in safe mode or the Terminal while on the Recovery Drive?

Sumtimes I can get the external drive to come on (but not boot) and I can see the files on it thru Terminal. Can I launch DiskWarrior thru the command line? I can't find any info on how to do that.

Will Terminal on the Recovery Drive let me shift files from fubar to the external drive or USB stick so that I can get sum of my more meaningful files off?

Will installing the OS over the net a second time overwrite and fix the problem (whatever happen to the old 'clean install' choice?).

With the external HD acting flakey, doing a restore from those files isn't truly a choice. I'd rather not wipe the drive before installing over the net.

Whatever anyone can think of, I'll giv it a shot. Thanks.

MacBook Pro

10.9.5

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Mar 27, 2015 6:30 AM

Reply
1 reply

The dreaded gray screen

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.