Grey screen of death with a twist

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Level 3

674 points

Grey screen of death with a twist

I was browsing on my Mac Pro, then suddenly my cursor turned from an arrow to a hand. I can move it around with the mouse, but I couldn't select anything. ie. other windows. My Mac froze, but the mouse was still working. After a couple of minutes clicking the mouse button to select something, the cursor turned from the hand back to the arrow. But I still couldn't select anything. So I decided to do a hard reboot.

This is when I got the grey screen of death. The computer started, chime sounded, grey screen with Apple logo and process wheel came on. The wheel stopped and disappeared at the mark when it normally does. But the screen stayed on the grey with Apple logo. And it just stuck there. So I did another hard reboot. Same thing. But this time I left it alone. After a few minutes, the Apple logo disappeared and it was just the grey screen. Waited a few more minutes, then the arrow cursor appeared, and I was able to move it around. But still the grey screen. Then about a minute later, my scanner started to boot (as it normally does when I startup my computer), but still a grey screen.

I've dealt with the grey screen of death before, but it never did this. It seems like my Mac is just responding extremely slow. That gives me the notion that if I left it alone for a couple of hours or so, my desktop and drives will eventually come up. That's just speculation though. And I just powered down my Mac to deal with it later. Does anyone know of this happening? I've never heard of people getting the grey screen, but their mouse works and peripherals startup on a delay. I'll try the troubleshooting for the grey screen when I get home from work. I was just curious about the other things during the startup, as I've never seen or heard of that happening before.

Thanks.

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), 4x1TB,10GB Ram,Radeon HD2600 256MB

Posted on Nov 6, 2015 9:19 AM

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Answer 1

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Nov 6, 2015 9:25 AM in response to Eric Shawn2

Reboot into Recovery and use Disk Utility to check the disc, it could be failing.

Disconnect all peripherals while doing this. (except kbd/mouse/monitor)

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Answer 2

Eric Shawn2 Author

Level 3

674 points

Nov 25, 2015 10:37 AM in response to Csound1

Thanks Csound1. Done those. Didn't help. Actually, earlier when this was going on, a couple of times I booted in Recovery Mode and ran Disk Utility, I was able to boot normally. But it only lasted for a while before it started acting up again. Now, it doesn't help at all anymore.

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Answer 3

Eric Shawn2 Author

Level 3

674 points

Nov 25, 2015 10:44 AM in response to Eric Shawn2

So after a couple of weeks trying to figure this out, here is the latest update of what I've come across.

I'm leaning more now towards my Radeon 2600XT is starting to fail (overheating), or one or more of my RAM has/is going bad.

On a few occasions, when I boot normally, it always boots very slow, but it boots. And for a while (a few hours to a day) my system seems to be running ok. But then it will act up again. Everything just stops responding, but I can still move my mouse cursor around. Forcing me to do a hard reboot. Which ends up "freezing" during reboot. Putting my system manually to sleep when it boots normally, will cause an immediate "freeze" as well. It will wake, but I can only move the mouse around, nothing else. The couple of times I've been able to boot from my other startup drives, it would last a little longer, but then eventually freeze as well.

It's also come to a point now, that when my system "freezes" and I try to reboot to another drive with a fresh install of OS X, it still "freezes" on boot up. The "holding down C key while booting", doesn't allow me to boot from a bootable USB stick (which I've been able to boot from prior to this issue).

However, when I boot in safe mode, it still takes a while to boot up, but it does boot. I can put my system to sleep, and wake without issue. The unfortunate thing though, it's not great trying to get things done in Safe Mode. Everything lags, and some features don't work. ie. no audio on videos, can't open video files. I've also noticed, the longer I keep my system running on Safe Mode, the slower it gets. As if the RAM is being used up, and not purging fast enough. So I have to reboot every couple of days or so.

Because it does boot up, and run relatively ok in Safe Mode, I'm wondering if it IS my GPU or RAM modules. If it's something within the OS on my primary startup drive, why won't it allow me to boot in to the other startup drives, including a bootable USB stick? I've even tried removing all drives, and only using one bootable drive at a time (I have 3 bootable drives), and each time same result, "freezing" on boot. There was ONE time when I got to boot from the USB stick, and I tried to do a clean install of Mavericks. It went through the whole process, then it rebooted. But it rebooted normally to my old 10.8.5 (which lasted for a day before it froze again). So not sure what happened there. And it hasn't been able to boot from the USB stick again.

I checked Console both booting in Safe Mode, and booting regularly, and both times (when it boots very slow), I saw a bunch of kernel messages during boot, followed by a GPU test message, then a whole bunch more of kernel lines, until it finally finishes starting up. There were also a lot of memory dumps. The times it has booted ok on normal startup, Console didn't show the kernel lines, the GPU test message, or memory dumps. Hence why I'm guessing it's the GPU or RAM module(s). But I've done a RAM test, and they all come back OK.

I managed to get a GeForce 8800GT, but unfortunately, the guy I got it from couldn't find the PCI-E power cable for it. You'd think this cable was something you can easily pick up at any local computer store. Turns out it's Apple proprietary. So I had to order it online. It'll be about a couple of weeks or so before I can test out the used/new GPU. The only thing I haven't done is wipe my main start up drive and reinstall the clean copy of the El Capitan. Unfortunately, even if I wanted to do this, I can't. Because my system doesn't want to boot from another bootable drive or USB stick.

Perhaps with this new info, someone can shed a little more light on what could be the problem? Thanks!

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