All I get at startup is a grey screen

I Have a macbook pro and only get a grey screen at start up

Go step by step and test.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1440
Startup Manager to select Startup disk.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1310
Repair Disk Section: "Try Disk Utility".
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203176
Reinstall OS X.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH18872

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How do i get iMac to move past grey screen.

How do i get iMac to move past grey screen.

Reinstalling Lion Without Erasing the Drive
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

Im having trouble getting my macbook pro to boot up after a fail safe boot, im getting as far as the grey screen with the apple loggo. so im trying to run a disk repair but is saying the disk is locked, how do i unlock disk??

Im having trouble getting my macbook pro to boot up after a fail safe boot, im getting as far as the grey screen with the apple loggo. so im trying to run a disk repair but is saying the disk is locked, how do i unlock disk??

Some clarification may help.
You say you cannot boot normally. It shows a gray screen with the Apple logo.
Did you say it will boot successfully in Safe Mode (boot, then hold down the Shift key)?
How did you boot the machine to run Disk Utility? (Which keyboard combinations)?

No Startup chime and grey screen only

Hi,
I have a 15" Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz (Tiger), it has no startup chime (just the click, whirr of the hard drive spinning up) and it goes to a light grey screen and nothing else.
if I connect it to an external monitor then I see my desktop on the external monitor but still nothing on the laptop screen. I replaced the screen and the LVDS cable and it is still the same result.
I tried resetting PRAM but since there is no chime and the external monitor comes on last I can't really tell if that did anything. I also tried booting into open firmware (to reset NVRAM) but again it doesn't seem to work since the external monitor powers up last in the startup cycle.
Any suggestions?
PRAM battery? (which is almost certainly dead).
Thanks

I'd try resetting the PMU also:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1431

I restored my ipod and all i get is an apple on the screen. It will not charge or anything, help

Restored ipod touch and all i get is the apple on the front. my computer will not charge it and itunes will not recognize it either

try holding the home button and the lock screen button until either the screen goes black or the white apple appears. do this plugged into itunes if that doesnt work then do it unplugged

Startup problems. Grey screen. Disk0s2 i/o error

Hi everyone!
I have a Macbook Pro from late 2011. Some time ago I had some startup issues. The computer kept frozen in the gray screen. I tried starting in single user mode, and running fsck and it said disk0s2 i/o error. Even with the Disk utility in the recovery HD, couldn't solve the problem.
Then I changed the Hard drive. Now I had the new hard drive for less than 1 month, and I have exactlly the same problem!! Is it possible that my laptop is burning all the Hard drives I put in it?? Is very strange that two different hard drives, diferent brands, have exactlly the same fail. And one new hard drive with just one month use!
Anyone can help me?

cubaz wrote:
am i going to be able to get it back with an installation disk?
You won’t know unless you try. Booting up from the Installer DVD, launch Disk Utility, select your hard disk, and click Verify Disk.
If there are any errors, click Repair Disk. You may need to repeat it until Disk Utility reports there are no problems.
If, however, there are still problems with your disk, you may need something like DiskWarrior, which is a much more powerful tool.

Snow leopard startup freezes at grey screen

My Snow leopard machine hangs during startup at the screen with the Grey Apple logo. It appears there is a SW issue with my OS X boot partition. Here are facts I have learned:
The computer boots fine if I hold option at startup and select my boot camp partition
The compute boots fine if I attach an external HD with OS X 10.6
Running a disk repair from the external HD, I see the following two issues that are repaired. Also, note the last line about boot partitions
After this disk repair, the disk will still not boot, it hangs at the Grey Apple logo.
Booting in safe mode does not resolve the issue, the machine will still not boot to a desktop
Booting in Verbose mode, drivers initialize with the last succesful line being the ethernet drives (I believe) and then the hangup occurs. It is unclear what state the boot process is at on the hangup.
This situation has happen twice in the past few weeks. The first time I did a reinstall of OS X to resolve the issue. Then, the issue appeared again approximately two weeks later. I'm hoping to avoid a second reinstall (And really, avoid this issue in the future).
Any thoughts on what is happening? It seems perhaps something in the boot partition table or the OS partition, although disk utility says the partition is fine. I have downloaded Test Disk 6.13 to look at the partition table, but I don't know how to interpret the outputs of that program.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks,
Josh

As a followup, I tried to run a combo updater install to correct this issue. I booted from my External HD, and downloaded 10.6.8 to update the non-bootable drive. However, 10.6.8 says it cannot be installed on this drive:
I read that 10.6.5 changed something about the partition table, so I tried falling back to 10.6.4 instead, and got the following message at the end of the install process:
I then tried 10.6.5 which says the disk is not properly configured to accepted the installation:
So the non-bootable drive has 10.6.3 installed on it, and 10.6.8 cannot be installed because it is not the startup disk, 10.6.5 cannot be installed because "the requirements are not meet" and 10.6.4 fails during the install process. Talk about nothing going my way!
-Josh

Macmini startup - three beeps - grey screen

When powering on, the fan starts and a few seconds later there are three long beeps and the screen never gets beyond grey. This has happened on a few occasions before, but was solved by 'resetting PMU' procedure. On one occasion it required several repitions of the rest, but now nothing helps.
Anyway around this?

Three beeps normally means a memory problem. If you get the three beeps each time, your memory is bad, and the work around is new memory.

Display has gone haywire - all I get is a line across the screen

So, I'm more than a little out of my element when working with my PowerBook but I really want to save this computer and I hope you guys can help. When I turn it on it makes the harmonious "bow" noise and then the gray start-up screen with the apple in the middle shows up and it's all moving along like normal. But then when it's supposed to show my main desktop screen the screen instead goes entirely black except for one strip that runs the length of the monitor. When I put a DVD into it the machine autostarts it and I can hear sound just fine but still the display is wacky. Is there anything I can do? I wouldn't mind hooking it up to an external monitor but I just don't know how. Can anyone point me in the right (and hopefully affordable) direction?

Welcome to the Apple discussions.
You don't say anything about which 15" Powerbook model you have, so in general, it may have come with a DVI to VGA adapter, which is what you could use that to attach a cable going to an external monitor that requires a regular PC cable. Or, if your external monitor accepts a DVI cable, you could use that connection.
If you can hook up an external monitor, and if it works, I would want to run the Apple hardware test, or either of the TechTools programs would work too. The hardware test will test the video hardware, and point out any issues. The Apple hardware test is on the original OS X disks that shipped with your machine (unless you have the first Powerbooks shipped, in which case they are online).

Im getting tree bings on a grey screen after the latest update

is any one else having this problem?

Hi, not quite sure what tree bings is?
Do you mean 3 beeps?
Can you count the beeps or flashes?
1 beep = no RAM installed
2 beeps = incompatible RAM types
3 beeps = no good banks
4 beeps = no good boot images in the boot ROM (and/or bad sys config block)
5 beeps = processor is not usable
In addition to the beeps, on some computers the power LED will flash a corresponding number of times plus one. The LED will repeat the sequence after approximately a 5-second pause. The tones are only played once.
Note: In this case, a flash is considered to be 1/4 second or 250 ms or greater in length.

Why does my computer not upload any updates, crash the internet all the time and give me the grey screen telling me to restart my computer more than it should?

I can't do anything without fear that it will ask for me to restart or simply crash. I dont know what's wrong. Update load then say there is an error right before finishing, but it does this with most things. Every internet browser I have tried gives me the "(insert browser name) had crashed" and then asks for me to send a useless report to apple. Its only a year and a half old and this started about 10 months into me buying it, i tried to just ignore it but i've lost important things.

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PB G4 OSX10.5 grey screen on startup/not recognize harddrive?

Powerbook G4 won't startup, stops at grey screen with folder alternating Finder icon/question mark.
Reseting PRAM has no effect.
When started in Safe mode, will go to two buttons, no drive icon.
When started in Safe mode with install DVD inserted, can get to Install screens.
Hardware tests (quick and long) show all okay.
When try to reinstall system, no icon for location to install to is shown.
Can put computer into Target mode, firewire icon appears on screen whether or not the install DVD is in. If install DVD is in, this will appear on second computer. If install DVD is not in, nothing appears on second computer.
History:
I purchased this unit preowned by single owner about a year ago with 10.5 installed. It has run well, almost exclusively Office 2004. Yesterday Entourage timed out Shut Down and would not allow Finder to be accessed by clicking on the desktop or Apple icon, so computer was shut down by press/holding power button.
Thank you for any assistance you can provide.
Troy.

if the drive is not visible at all in Disk Utility it's not a good sign.
sometimes the issue could be caused by drive cable connection or cable going bad, it's quite rare though
sometimes the drive may work when put into an external enclosure
DriveSavers is a well known recovery service, could be expensive:
http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/

My macbook pro laptop has a grey screen at start up and doesn't boot up all the way

to whom this may concern, i have a macbook pro and the computer on startup has a grey screen i get the apple symbol and a status bar but as the status bar is filling it only fills 1/3 of the way and the computer shuts down i tried turning back on several times and have had no luck. what could be the problem ?

mr.edsr wrote:
Where is the SMC located and how is this done? Thank you!
Please read this link:
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
Ciao.

IMac wont startup (grey screen of death??)

Hi my iMac G5 wont start up. When I power on I only get as far as the first all grey screen. The fans are running continiously until I have to shut it down. I tried inserting the recovery disk after rebooting but no joy (and now I can't eject the recovery disk).
Any ideas?

1. Have you tried the SMU reset? (Disconnect every cable from the back of the computer and leave for a few minutes; then reinsert power cable while holding power button in and hold power button in for at least 10 seconds; then release power button and press it again to power on the Mac).
2. Do you have OS X installed on an external HD ? If so, power on and hold down the Option key - if you get the screen with your eHD listed with OS X across it, then click that and see if it boots from that.
If neither of these work, and you've tried Safe Boot, and the Install disk, then it may turn out to be the logic board :-( (if it was your HD you should get as far as a grey screen displaying a folder with a blinking ? ).

G5 locks on grey screen at startup

Started having disfunction with sleep mode (locked going into our out of sleep) and at startup some desktop icons would remain as white boxes, plus a couple other freeze-up problems. This lasted a couple days and now startup freezes at grey screen with no progress wheel. Local apple service says the logic board is toast. Is there anything I can do myself or anything I can ask the service guys to convince myself that this diagnosis is correct? $2500 for a machine and hardware that lasts 2.5 yrs makes me sick.
sick rick

Boot off your Install Disk while holding down the d key, (not c key), then run the extended Apple Hardware Test.
Unless your G5 came with a separate Apple Hardware Test CD, then use it & the C key.
Call Apple too, they've been quite nice for G5 problems if you're calm, focused, and pleasant.
Check for extended Warranties too. Some G5s were included.

All I get at startup is a grey screen

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