I have a 2008 24" iMac, 3.06GHz Intel Core Duo, 6MB L2 cache, 4 GB 800MHz DDR2, 500 GB SATA running 10.9.5. Was working fine; suddenly won't boot up. After the "bong" the Apple logo & spinning wheel appear along w/ a progress bar at the bottom of the screen. Progress bar moves about 1/4" from L -R & within 30" machine shuts down.
Any suggestions?
Thanks, MABPHOTOG
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)
Try boot with alt press on and check system from recovery partition. First check by disk utility drives.
Thanks for the tips. I've tried every start/keystroke combo on this list: http://macs.about.com/od/macoperatingsystems/qt/osxstartupkeys.htm & nothing is working except Option or c. I have a flash drive w/ Mountain Lion installed. My HD is partitioned in 2; 1 for apps & 1 for data. The apps partition is locked so I cannot install ML on it. The data portion is unlocked so I can install ML on it. My question is by doing this will all my data be lost?
Thanks, mabphotog
If you are currently running 10.9 on the partition, you will have to erase it to install 10.8, so whatever is on the partition will be lost. Do you have a backup you could restore from?
In the Disk Utility the apps partition volume cannot be verified completely or repaired: "Disk Utility can't repair this disk". The data partition volume however, "...appears to be OK." To add to my confusion there is another item "disk1" containing "OS X Base System." Unfortunately I do not have a backup as I was in the process of moving when this all went down. Is there any way I can recover the data?
You've been very helpful, thanks, mabphotog
You are welcome. Boot into the Recovery Partition and try using Disk Utility/Restore to copy the data to a new location. Please note that this will reformat the destination partition.
iMac will not boot up
