G4 Won't Boot, Stuck on Solid Blue Screen

It's flickering every ten seconds from a lighter blue to a med blue, sometimes the rotating wheel is there, sometimes it disappears.
I had to power if down without proper shut down when it displayed a message saying iTunes had quite unexpectedly, only I did not even have iTunes open.
Then it asked if I wanted to report the problem, I canceled and it kept coming back with both dialog boxes, after attempting to cancel them five times I shut all apps that I could shut and then power it off to force a quit.
When I powered back on it displayed the screen with the apple on it, then went to a solid light blue and it's stuck there. I have powered it off two more times,
and left it off for a few minutes but it keeps doing the same thing when I try to get it to start up again.
Any ideas are greatly appreciated!
Janet

Hi Janet,
>It's flickering every ten seconds from a lighter blue to a med blue, sometimes the rotating wheel is there, sometimes it disappears.
Is it hot there? Have you blown the dust out lately?
>I had to power if down without proper shut down when it displayed a message saying iTunes had quite unexpectedly, only I did not even have iTunes open.
Hmmm, iTunes Helper is normally running akk the time, Check System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items window, highlight it & click the little minus icon.
Boot off your Apple Hardware Test Disc , then run the extended Apple Hardware Test. Your model would have a separate AHT CD.
Here's the list and downloads for AHT for some G4 models if you don't find yours, some G4s only have it on the Original Install Disc...
http://www.info.apple.com/support/aht.html
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair Disk, (not Repair Permissions). Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
If perchance you can't find your install Disc, at least try it from the Safe Boot part onward.

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Macbook pro won't boot, stuck on white apple screen

Noticed today, that my macbook pro won't boot . It gets to the white apple screen with the spinner under the apple logo. It stays like this for a long time without doing anything except spinning.
I've powered down and tried to boot up several times.
I have boot camp and windows on my mac and when the white screen appears, I can press Option to bring up which hard drive and the Windows partition will load without any problems.

Exacty what happens when you try to boot up from the disc that came with your computer? Are you holding down the c key? Have you tried holding down the "option key?" Are you able to run the Hardware Test - Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test
Shut down your computer and disconnect all peripherals (keyboard & mouse if pertinent) from your computer. Now reboot.
If the Mac starts up normally, shut it down again and then plug in one of the peripherals (keyboard or mouse first) and start up your computer again. If it does so successfully repeat the process, adding one peripheral at a time until your Mac acts up. At that point, disconnect the last peripheral you added, reboot your Mac and search the peripheral vendor's website for an updated driver.
If no driver exists or the problem remain after installing the new driver, try a different cable or a different port on your Mac.
If none of the above works, again disconnect all peripherals from your Mac, hold down the "shift" key to start up in "Safe Boot" mode.
If the Mac starts up correctly, restart without pressing the "shift" key.
If your computer still does not start up properly, shut it down and restart it while holding down the Apple+Option-P-R keys; keep holding "all 4 keys" down until you hear the startup sound "twice."
If none of the above work Disconnect all peripherals from your computer. Boot from your install disc & run Repair Disk from the utility menu. To use the Install Mac OS X disc, insert the disc, and restart your computer while holding down the C key as it starts up.
Select your language.
Once on the desktop, select Utility in the menu bar.
Select Disk Utility.
Select the disk or volume in the list of disks and volumes, and then click First Aid.
Click Repair Disk.
(If Disk Utility cannot repair, you will need a stronger utility (3rd party) - Diskwarrior or Techtool PRO)
Restart your computer when done.
Repair permissions after you reach the desktop-http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751 and restart your computer.
Remove any 3rd party ram.
Reinstall Lion - This will install a "fresh" copy of Lion without archiving old system files but leaves the rest of your files in place.
If your computer is still under warranty or you have Apple Care, take full advantage of it by letting tech support deal with your problems. It's what you're paying them for.
Out of warranty - take the computer to an Apple store or an AASP. Whichever is more convenient for you.

Macbook won't boot past gray/light blue screen- Help!

Hello,
I've had my Macbook for two years (no problems until now). I was using Safari, and suddenly, my screen froze and strange whirring noises were emitted from the laptop. I manually shut down the computer, then tried restarting a minute or so later. However, the only screen that comes up is gray/light blue- there are no icons present at all. No programs load, even after a few minutes.
So far, I have removed the HD and connected it to another computer via external enclosure. Everything seems to be fine from that end- the HD mounted and all of my files were present. I tried insert the OS X install disk, but the disk does not appear to be recognized. I have also tried using safe mode, but nothing. Now I can't even eject the disk from the laptop.
Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance...

The boot sector of the drive is fine or you'd never get to the gray/blue screen.
fligex is correct in the fact that a sector or two may be corrupted. Most of the time you can run "repair permissions" and "Repair Disk" with disk utility and it will fix the problem. Unless the drive is just dieing then the problem will come back or it just will not boot again.
This is why you need to boot from install DVD, another Mac or and external drive with OSX installed.
You cannot seem to get the install DVD to boot. Unless you take it to an Authorized Apple repair you are just going to be in limbo until you can get one of the above listed to work.
Did you ever get the DVD out of the drive?
I can only offer the same suggestions from before, I'll give them again just for grins.
1. The install DVD (a gray dvd) has to be the same DVD that was shipped with that Mac. Unless you have a retail DVD (a black DVD) in which can see OSX on that disk cannot be older than the OSX that shipped with the Mac. If these are not followed then the Mac may not boot from the DVD.
2.Sometime you PRAM and or SMC can get into a state that needs to be reset. They can cause many sporadic problems and the Mac not booting is one of them, and the Mac not ejecting the DVD is another. This is why it is important to make sure that they get reset, and properly.
Pram:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
SMC:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411
3. You can boot from an external drive that has OSX install, by the following.
Plug the external drive into the Mac, then power on the Mac and immediately press and hold the "option" key until the Startup Manager appears. Select the external drive from the GUI interface and press the right arrow button on the lower right bottom of the screen. This will force the Mac to boot from that drive. At this point you can run disk utilities from the external firewire drive against the internal Mac drive.
4. You can also put your Mac (with the disk install) into Target Disk Mode. Then plug the TDM Mac into another Mac with a firewire cable. Then TDM will populate on the desktop of the other Mac as an external firewire drive at which point you can run the disk utilities against the external (TDM Mac).
5. Since you had the drive out you could easily put it into an external enclosure and plug it into another Mac to run the disk utilities against it.
Good luck...

Powerbook won't boot - stuck on blue Screen with rolling pin wheel

Hi, maybe someone could remove my current headache.
My old Powerbook G4 is stucked on a blue screen with an infinite rolling pin wheel(just after the little mouse arrow appears and disappears).
For the information:
- I already did all the possibilities on this page without success:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1411?viewlocale=en_US#symp1
- When I do Fsck in single user mode, it tells me that everything is fine with the HD
- I also checked techtool pro v4: everything is fine with the hard drive and files
- I can't start in safe mode
- I can't put my computer in Firewire target disk mode - the Fireware icon screen appears but it doesn't mount on my apple dekstop.
- I don't know where is my old PB G4 install disk, so I can't try that.
Message was edited by: NGrignon

I don't know where is my old PB G4 install disk, so I can't try that.
And, there in lies the solution. Without an OS disc to repair the OS you are up the creek without an OS disc.

My macbook won't start up, it gets stuck on the blue screen. can it be fixed? i suspect a hacking due to a strange phone call earlier which i thought was a scam.

my macbook won't start up, it gets stuck on the blue screen. can it be fixed? i suspect a hacking due to a strange phone call earlier which i thought was a scam.

Reinstall OS X without erasing the drive
1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. 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 installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

Stuck at a blue screen on boot up

When i try to boot into osx it get stuck at a blue screen and the little loading icon will show for a few seconds then go away for a few second and repeats, help is much apreciated

How full is your HD? I had this same problem and the Genius Bar guy thought that the lack of space on the HD led to file corruption during virtual memory swapping. After deleting ~10 GB of files (backed up, of course), I re-installed the OS from the install disk and everything seems fine now.

My computer won't start up it's stuck on the blue screen

my computer won't start up it's stuck on the blue screen

I've researched and I'm doing the internet recovery HD, hopefully I can move on from this situation..

MacMini won't boot, stuck on the Apple logo

Hi,
I suddenly had an issue with my Mac Mini. It started to take long seconds, even minutes, to load a software (with the round cursor turning). So I decided to restart it but, how surprise, it got stuck on a blue screen. A few more try to shut down and start again, including with the original install DVD, but it's now stuck on the screen with the Apple logo on white background...
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- tried to start with the original install DVD, not better (DVD is actually now stuck in the Mini, I can't get it out...)
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This happened to me last night.
I was updating my iPod and I got a message saying that it needed to do an update. I installed the update and went on ahead putting new songs on my iPod. When it was finished i ejected as I usually do and closed down.
When I went to check me e-mails this morning the Macbook would not boot. It sticks on the grey screen with the Apple and the spinny disc underneath, then it restarts and sticks on the same screen. The last software to be onstalled was Norton 11 on Monday but I have used the Macbook since. I cannot think why it will not boot.
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Slow boot, 3 min. of blue screen

Sirs
I have read many slow boot, and blue screen issues here. I have re-installed SL.
I have removed the LaunchDaemons, ran /sbin/fsck -fy (no repair needed).
I did repair permissions and received this message:
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAg ent" has been modified and will not be repaired.
I'm running OS X 10.6.3 on a MacBookPro 3,1 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 160Gb drive with 69Gb avail.
It takes 3.5 minutes to boot with 3 of them stuck on the blue screen after the apple is gone.
any help would be much appreciated.
thank you
dan

chuckychu1983 wrote:
mmmhhh i was also looking for suspicious trash in preferences. how did u manage to think it was that corrupt file?
Hi c,
The safest way to test for things like this is to create a backup clone (CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper! or Time Machine), make sure it's totally current, and then you can go in and do things that you wouldn't normally do; if you create more problems, then you can just clone the pre-problems backup back to your internal HD and you're back to where you started. I learn a lot this way (not all of it good! ). I have multiple backups, and I'm still freaked out when I move/trash/change something and my Mac won't boot. Then it's just a matter of cloning back or restoring things from TM.
Message was edited by: tjk

Why is my macbook pro stuck on a blue screen

I was downloading a program that was put onto a disk image, then my macbook battery died (forgot it was unplugged). When i plugged it back in and booted it back up, it did the usual tone and apple logo/spinning gear. Shortly after it would go to a pale blue screen and occasionally have a spinning gear, but no matter how long i wait it stays on the same screen.
i have tried everything here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570
except i't wont let me start from the install disk (it just goes to the blue screen)
i have the mac os x install disk one and two, but im also not sure what one to put in and if these are the right ones anyways.
I also have a windows xp partition that i CAN access without getting stuck on the blue screen.
So, is the hard drive corrupt even though i can access the windows partition?
Do i need to replace the hard drive?
i cant go to an apple store and get it fixed, i just dont want to drive there (but i will if i need a new hard drive)
this is my first mac and i have only basic knowledge of the operating system.
i think it was running on 10.6 (snow leopard), but i only have the install disks that came with my mac.

To fix your issue is too complicated and lengthy to go into all of it here as it sounds like a hardware issue, it will require the services of person very familiar and experienced with Mac's to first recover your data and then restore OS X back to a functional state which may or may not require new hardware/software installed.
If your under warranty or AppleCare, take it in for service.
You can also hire the services of a local Mac computer support technician experienced in these matters.
Have them look at your Wifi, RAM amount, extra storage and computer backup proceedures in the process.
Good Luck.

Power Mac stuck at light blue screen

I've searched numerous forums and my problem doesn't seem to have a solution (that I could find). I have a 2.0 GHz early 2005 Power Mac G5 (7,3) that won't get past the light blue screen at start-up. I've tried everything - reset the PRAM, Apple Hardware Check (on overnight loops, everything came back OK), fsck (all OK), repaired my HD and permissions on it, and then erased the drive using Target Disk Mode and another Mac, and attempted to reinstall OSX from the install disk that came with it (with OSX Tiger). I've tried switching out the RAM with no luck. The only thing I haven't tried is a new video card (the installed one is an ATI Radeon 9600).
Here's what it does: powers on with the usual chime, then moves on to the white Apple screen, the wheel spins, then it moves on to a darker blue screen, then it finally moves on to a lighter blue screen with an arrow, and it just stays there. It will boot into safe mode (pressing shift), but I can't even upgrade to Leopard in safe mode, much less figure out what's wrong. Help!

bildungsroman wrote:
Actually, this post gave me the first (temporary) solution I have yet to run across: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3263472?tstart=0
It seems like the culprit is my video card. I'm going to order a new one and report back...
Sounds like the right thing to do. I've had similar problems in the past with a problematic video card, because of course, Safe Boot does not use anything more than the basic capabilities of the card and usually doesn't load the driver kext, which should probably be ATIRadeon9700, at least for Tiger.
For grins, you can do a verbose boot (hold down cmd-V combination at power up) and after the gray screen with Apple embossed logo, you will go to essentially a Unix console screen, which should at some point report loading the driver, which will probably be the hang point.

MacBook Stuck in Startup Blue Screen, HDD is Spinning

Well, I fear the worst has occurred to my mid 07 Macbook.
When I boot up the machine, it stays stuck in the blue screen start up, not able to find any startup disc. I gave a listen to the HDD and it is spinning when I try starting up. So this would mean a system failure, however I have had the motherboard replaced twice this year. Is the motherboard/system most liekly the issue?

This has nothing to do with with iPhoto - post in the MacBook Forum - http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=218
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Solid blue screen - is the computer dead?

My 2004 iMac has been a champ. But it would not reboot yesterday -   I get a solid blue screen with the pointer .......pointer works - nothing else loads. Is this the end for my iMac?

Do you hear a chime when it starts up? Have you tried booting from the install disc and running
Disk Utility
   1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
   2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
      Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
   3. Click the First Aid tab.
   4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
   5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
   6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk.
And run the Apple Hardware test that came with your machine install discs as well.
Let us know how you make out,

When i plug my Ipod touch 4th generation in it goes to the apple screen and then it will turn off and then back on to a solid blue screen.

When i plug my Ipod touch 4th generation in it goes to the apple screen and then shuts off and then turns back on and goes to a solid blue screen.

Try:
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- Also try DFU mode after try recovery mode
How to put iPod touch / iPhone into DFU mode « Karthik's scribblings
- If not successful and you can't fully turn the iOS device fully off, let the battery fully drain. After charging for an least an hour try the above again.
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I've recently update to Yosemite, ever since my Mac won't boot up from the grey screen

ive recently update to Yosemite, ever since my Mac won't boot up from the grey screen, I've checked on the utilities and disk can not be repaired. I'm gutted is it dead?.........how can I solve this......help please
<Re-Titled By Host>

Did you mean Command + Option + R for internet recovery?
The only key commands I know that involve P is a PRAM reset:
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH11243?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Or maybe I am missing or misunderstanding something?

G4 Won't Boot, Stuck on Solid Blue Screen

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