Gray screen - no external drive - tips?

Hi. My refurb'd MBA (back from Apple about two weeks after replacement of Airport card, installed 10.6 about 10 days ago, no problems since) froze this morning, now boots only to a gray screen with an icon folder with a flashing question mark. I zapped the PRAM, and safe-rebooted, to no avail.
I've seen the Apple info sheet for the gray screen issue, and there's only so far I can go without an external drive (the info sheet is more geared towards traditional Macbooks). Does anyone have any suggestions?

A flashing question mark normally means that the computer can not find a valid boot disk/system folder. You should be able to connect an external usb drive with a valid system installed on it and boot the computer. If you have a super drive, you should be able to boot from the install dvd also.
Glor

Similar Messages

White screen from external drive?

I'm having the white screen issue and I think I've narrowed it down to my external drive as the problem. When I unplug and go through restart process, start up is fine. How do I resolve this issue and make my mac and drive work in perfect harmony once again? Thanks, John

Your profile says you are running OS 10.6.6. If so, you have an Intel iMac and should probably post in the Intel iMac forums here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=189
If the Mac in question is not the one in your profile and looks like this:
!http://images.apple.com/support/images/heroimacG4.jpg!
then you are in the correct forum area.

Daisy-Chaining Firewire External Drive Tips Needed here!

H, I have three cases with drives in them I want to connect to my iMac for various duty:
1) fw/400/800/esata/usb case (externally-powered)
2) fw/400/usb case (externally-powered)
3) fw/400/esata/usb case (bus-powered)
My current setup is to chain 1 & 2, and plug that chain into the firewire 800 port on the imac, and 3 is just plugged into one of the USB ports on the back of the iMac.
Is this the best way to do this? I am concerned that by chaining 2 to 1, that I am slowing down the fw800 drive inside 1. Is that true? Well, thx for any tips

I'll agree with *"a brody"* my gut say's 1 to the 800 port, 2 to the 400 port with 3 daisy chained to 2, how ever it might depend on what your using each drive for.
Open your Activity Monitor and select the Disk Activity tab, then by copying the same size file or folder to each drive you should get some idea of the transfer speed to each drive. You can also use this method to check the speed when copying between External HD's. (Note: for testing sustained transfer speeds use at least a 1GB or even better a 10GB file or folder)

Repair Permissions Grayed Out On External Drive

I was having some strange issues with my firewire disk in Final Cut Pro so I decided to repair the premissons using disk utility. For some reason "repair premissions" is grayed out. I did a repair disk and everything showed to be fine, but repair premissions is still grayed out.
Any idea what's going on? Or what I should do?
Thanks.

Rick,
Did you ever solve this problem? I'm having the exact same issue. I have a Late 2011 MBP 17" with the i7 2.5. I have 16GB RAM installed and a Samsung 830 250GB SSD in the original HD spot with a 750GB Hybrid drive in the optibay. When a heavy load is being placed on the 750gb drive, it'll unmount and I will get the "didn't eject" error. I have to turn it off for about 5 minutes then boot it to have the drive recognized again. I especially notice this when I'm running VMWare Fusion along with my Mac and the Windows side is having to do some "hard" work.

IMac grey screen with external HDD attached

I used to have unibody Macbook with externall USB HDD (containing Time Machine and some free space) attached to it.
Today I have 2011 iMac but now if HDD is connected via USB, computer will stay at gray screen (after DVD drive noises).
If I disconnect the HDD, it succesfully boots. And ALT key Boot Menu with plugged HDD can be opened no problems too.
Formatted and partitioned HDD - no change.

1. Potential solution: Apple wants your forum feedback
Please see a post in the following thread and reply to it as you wish. Apple has now reportedly requested that we provide evidence in support of our desire to have the "open lid with screen off" option reinstated (eg significance of operating temperature differences, reduction in wifi reception, etc). They may then address our concerns with a Lion update.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3190417?start=60&tstart=0
2. The madness of magnets
This is getting very worrying. It's madness that Apple owners feel obliged to experiment with passing magnets over the top of their premium-priced computers and sticking them on here, there and everywhere in the hope of finding short-term workarounds. The sooner this problem is fixed at source (ie within Lion), the better.

HT201475 Problem with gray screen after connecting external drive

I attached a LaCie external drive to back up photos and iTunes on iMac running Mountain Lion OS. I'm trying to resize partitions to back up but after attaching I'm having problems restarting and/or shutting down. I keep getting gray screen And have to shut down to start up. Now my external drive only shows one partition on desk top and I can't access in disk utility at all.

Hi!
We are having the same problem for years now (Forms10g with webutil) and had no solution but disabling the client cache. But this has to be done on the client.
In this Thread webutil&forms11g R2 64bit
a solution from oraclemysupport is mentioned, which can be done on the server:
JRE CRASHES/HANGS THE BROWSER HAVING HYPERTHREADING ENABLED [ID 601534.1]
(Solution 2)
We'l give it a try....

Kernel Panics, Gray screen of death, and hard drives, oh my!

Last week, while performing multiple tasks on my G4, Safari froze up and completely locked up the entire computer. I rebooted by manually pushing the glowing power button the front of the tower. During reboot, I got the gray screen of death with the "you need to restart your macintosh... by holding down the power button for several seconds" message.
After a couple tries and getting that exact same gray screen of death, I started to worry about all my data.
I took both drives out of the G4 Quicksilver - one, a 500gb Barracuda Seagate (Master/bay 1), the other a 200gb Hitachi (slave/bay 2). I hooked them up to an older G4 and ran DiskWarrior and DiskUtility on both of them. The master drive had serious (>34%) fragmentation, which has since been cleaned up. The slave drive was relatively fine.
here's my current problem:
When I hook up:
1. Just the Master with no jumper pins, the drive runs fine, no problems, all settings and prefs are there, etc.
2. Just the Master with the correct pin settings, I get the kernel panic screen of death
3. The Master with correct pin settings and Slave with correct pin settings, kernel panic screen of death
4. If I swap the Master and Slave, and make the correct pin settings, the booting process starts and then I get a light gray screen with the "ghostbusters/do not enter" circle.
I put the original Slave drive in an external HD firewire enclosure, and it will mount on the desktop after the original Master drive has booted up - BUT - if I have the external drive powered up before I boot the Master, I get a gray screen with nothing on it - no message, nothing but grayscreen.
I've backed up my critical data, but would like to get these two drives back into their normal operating Master/Slave relationship that served them well for the last couple years.
Any help greatly appreciated.

New wrinkle:
This morning trying at boot up, the Mac chime sounded, the gray screen w/the apple logo appeared, and then the machine sounded like either the main fan or one of the two drives spun down. Shortly thereafter, I got the prohibitory sign again.
I rebooted and then got something completely different: a black screen with a small blinking vertical rectangle in the top left of the screen, with nothing else happening for a long time, so I manually rebooted and tried to boot into safe mode.
Trying to boot into safe mode gave me the chime, the apple logo, and then the sound of either the fan or drive spinning down and leaving me at the prohibitory sign once again.
Finally I option-booted to the slave drive and upon startup, received the following crash report, which might as well be in Swahili as far as my being able to make sense of it:
Sat Apr 11 09:59:48 2009
Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 0): 0x300 - Data access DAR=0x0000000003DFFF70 PC=0x000000000032F68C
Latest crash info for cpu 0:
Exception state (sv=0x2d409780)
PC=0x0032F68C; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x03DFFF70; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x00287A40; R1=0x2D3BFDD0; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:
0x2D3BFE20 0x00287AA0 0x00288658 0x0030C5AC 0x000B34C8 0xFFFFDFFF
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2d409780)
previously dumped as "Latest" state. skipping...
Exception state (sv=0x24459500)
PC=0x93091180; MSR=0x0000D930; DAR=0x00100AE4; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x000067FC; R1=0xBFFFED50; XCP=0x00000030 (0xC00 - System call)
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: launchd
Mac OS version:
9G55
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.6.0: Mon Nov 24 17:39:01 PST 2008; root:xnu-1228.9.59~1/RELEASE_PPC
System model name: PowerMac3,5
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xFFFF0003): 0x300 - Data access
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x0009BCF0 0x0009C694 0x00029EA0 0x000AFA90 0x000B32F8
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2d409780)
PC=0x0032F68C; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x03DFFF70; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x00287A40; R1=0x2D3BFDD0; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:
0x2D3BFE20 0x00287AA0 0x00288658 0x0030C5AC 0x000B34C8 0xFFFFDFFF
Exception state (sv=0x24459500)
PC=0x93091180; MSR=0x0000D930; DAR=0x00100AE4; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x000067FC; R1=0xBFFFED50; XCP=0x00000030 (0xC00 - System call)
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: launchd

Gray Screen w/o Pinwheel and a dead optical drive-what to do?

This is a G4 iMac 700Mhz Flat-panel Running OS 10.4.9. The internal optical drive long ago gave up the ghost. I have been using an external LaCie optical drive which is firewire. The gray screen of death arrived this AM after software update the previous evening with Apple logo, but no pinwheel. Tried Reset PRAM (-); tried single user mode (-); tried booting from the firewire drive . Any suggestions? Hardware? Software? Time for a new machine?

Hurray!! Dodged another bullet. Hooked into the desktop HD using Firewire Target disk mode and was able to wash it with DIsk Warrior 3.03. Then I ran Disk Utility to repair any permissions and it booted right up. Thanks for the Help!!

Gray screen on bootup with external HDD attached

I recently bought a Cavalry 1TB External USB hdd. Following their instructions, I connected the drive after I started up and logged into the Mac. Formatted the drive as Extended (non-journaled) with the Apple Partition.
It mounts and runs fine, if I don't have it connected to the mini on start-up. I get a gray screen and it pretty much does nothing, if it is connected on startup of the mini. So I have to shut down the drive, unplug it, hold down the mini power button to shut that down, then restart mini, login, plug the USB drive in, and turn it on. It is then recognized again.
I called Cavalry and they suggested that the mini is looking to boot off of the USB drive first, and that's why it's hanging. Could this really be the problem? If so, is there a way to configure the mini to look at the internal hard drive drive before the USB?
If this isn't the problem, does anyone have any ideas about what it could be?
Thanks.

So I tried pretty much every format configuration possible for the drive, and no dice for boot-up or for the "Startup Disks" listing.
I reformatted for windows and that worked without a hitch (not really surprising, and good if (for when) I have to sell it).
So running out of options, and totally frustrated, I gave up, sent it to Bason (Cavalry's Tech Support provider) and their Tech claims "works fine on my machine!", so they're sending it back to me.
What I find curious is that my wife's Black MacBook doesn't see the thing either on startup, though it only hangs for a short time on her's.
I expect the drive to still not work, though I will give it a try when I receive it sometime in the next 3 days - 3 weeks.
All input on this has been very much appreciated. Any additional thoughts on this issue will continue to be appreciated.
Thanks.

Trouble booting off DVD/external drive. wierd boot screen

My new iBook G4 has been working fine by itself.
I have an older external firewire drive and when I try to use that as the startup drive, it seems to boot up fine but the cursor remains frozen in the top left corner. The keyboard seems to work fine. (I haven't been able to get keyboard commands to drive the menus. That's another problem I guess).
I can run the original install disk and I can run the hardware diagnostics on it. All is fine.
Then I tried to reinstall Tiger on the external hard drive using the install DVD that came with our family pack.
When I run the installer on my new iBook G4 and the computer restarts, the screen that comes up after the gray Apple logo and spinning gear is a blue border and white rectangle with graphics showing what look like a two-step process, numbered 1 and 2 at the bottom. The graphic depicts an oval shape with what looks like a cover removed and two AA-type battery icons linked to the graphic. The picture is much the same for each step with differences the communnicate the idea of inserting or replacing. The second step has a small blinking red circle, like a screw head.
I have no control over the arrow cursor in the top-left of my screen. No action I can perform onscreen from the keyboard.
What is this screen?
I tried resetting PRAM, went into Open Firmware to reset NVRAM and all.
No devices are attached and it still does this. I don't use a wireless mouse, which is sort of what the oval shape reminds me of. Given the frozen cursor in both cases, it makes me think there's something going on with the information it's getting about what pointing device is being used.
The DVD runs fine on other computers and is right now completing the installation I was trying to do, using a Powerbook G4.

Thanks. Makes sense. I'll try that. I had checked the drive firmware with the most recent LaCie updater. So I didn't think it was the drive.
I did manage to use the keyboard shortcuts to open the Keyboard Preference Pane while booted off of the external drive. I enjoyed learning how useful it is to type the beginning of search terms (like "trac") into the Search box and use the menu of matches returned to navigate by Mouse to the Trackpad pane, only to be told that the Trackpad Tab wasn't loaded because my iBook doesn't have one (wrong). It had loaded only the Mouse tab.
Learning a few new tidbits today. Thank you very much.

MBP 13" Won't Boot, Gray Screen w/ ? Folder, Hard Drive is perfectly fine

I have a 13" Macbook Pro that won't boot up. When I used my install disk to get to disk utility, it did not recognize that there were any drives in the computer.
I tried:
Removing the hard drive and plugging it into another computer using a SATA to USB adapter. It worked fine and I could see all of the files on the hard drive. I ran the disk utility on another Mac to see if there were errors. It found none. I then restarted the other Mac and selected to boot from the USB drive and it booted perfectly fine. I tried reconnecting and seeing if it would boot now for some reason (machines are funny like that). It didn't; same problem.
Next, I tried:
Installing a different hard drive to see if the disk utility program would see it. It did not.
Then, I tried:
Connecting the original hard drive to the defective Mac using the SATA to USB adapter and trying to boot from USB. This worked fine.
Conclusions so far:
-The Hard Drive is 100% ok
-The Hard Drive Cable MAY be defective
-If the Hard Drive Cable is not at fault, there MAY be a problem with the logic board.
I was wondering if anyone has any further ideas for me before I try swapping out the hard drive/infrared cable?
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

I have pretty much the same problem, although I don't get the question mark, I get the gray screen with a symbol like a "no entry" sign. In other words, circle with a slash through it. Very odd. Never seen that before. I booted from two different external drives and the computer boots fine. The internal drive mounts on my desktop and is accessible, nothing is wrong. I cloned the internal drive to one of the external drives and booted from that fine as well.
The disk has been repaired via Drive Genius. I rebuilt the directory through Drive Genius and it seems to run just fine.
It seems it may be as simple as a bad or loose cable, but since the icon is something I'd never seen I wanted to see if anyone knows what that icon might mean. The only new thing I did last week was defrag the drive through Drive Genius.
Oh also, I replaced the battery last year from OWC. The glue holding the silver outer plate has come off so that battery, though working fine, is a bit of a pain. Since the battery is lose inside that casing, I was wondering if maybe there is a strain internally. I don't know the wiring that's near the battery connection.
Thanks for any help

My MacBook Pro stated that it needed to be updated. I clicked yes to restart the computer and update but when it restarted it stays on the gray screen with the apple logo and then pops up, stating "unable to find driver for this platform." What do I do?

My MacBook Pro stated that it needed to be updated. I clicked yes to restart the computer and update but when it restarted it stays on the gray screen with the apple logo and then pops up, stating "unable to find driver for this platform." What do I do?

Boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at the startup chime. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.
Note: You need an always-on Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet to use Recovery. It won’t work with USB or PPPoE modems, or with networks that require any kind of authentication other than a WPA or WPA2 Personal password.
When the Mac OS X Utilities screen appears, follow the prompts to reinstall the Mac OS. You don't need to erase the boot volume, and you won't need your backup unless something goes wrong. If your Mac didn’t ship with Lion, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade, so make a note of those before you begin.
Don't install the Thunderbolt update -- it's defective.

Brand new hard drive and still can't get past the gray screen

i was having problems with my mac last night going to the gray screen, sometimes i'd get the folder with the question mark. i looked up for solutions and i tried every one i could find short of reformatting the hard drive. nothing worked, getting the start-up disk causes the mac to freeze on the screen with the picture of a disk and an arrow after i press the arrow to go into disk utilities. i took it to the apple store, which i wasn't really happy with my service there- i was called up immediately but then was never able to explain what was happening to the guy he just plugged in the computer, went back to helping someone else and periodically looked at my screen. i understand that they probably take care of multiple people at once so they don't get complaints about wait times, but i don't think i was really helped at all, he just ended up saying that i needed a new hard drive and if i knew how to put one in i was better off doing it myself then sent me on my way. well i bought a new hard drive and upon installing it and putting in the mac os x disk it still freezes and no solution has worked yet.

So all you need then is to know how to format the drive and install Snow Leopard.
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3910

Hi I replaced my hard drive on macbook and I want to install mac osx10.5 with the CD that came with the macbook. When I run the CD after a while I get the page showing language options for 2 second then a gray screen appears and nothing happens

Hi I replaced my hard drive on macbook and I want to install mac osx10.5 with the CD that came with the macbook. When I run the CD after a while I get the page showing language options for 2 second then a gray screen appears and nothing happens. I partitioned my hard drive and I tried installing Microsoft windows and that worked just fine. But I do not understand why it wont install mac os x 10.5????? PLEASE HELP ME. Thanks Hamid

Try a new post in the 10.5 Installation forum.
DALE

I just had a new hard drive installed. After loading everything back on my computer from external drive, i came to the "select wireless network screen. I've misplaced the WEP password for my internet. Is there anyway to find it on another computer?

i just had a new hard drive installed. After loading everything back on my computer from external drive, i came to the "select wireless network screen. I've misplaced the WEP password for my internet. Is there anyway to find it on another computer?

Maybe. What kind of other computer are you talking about? What operating system is it running? What kind of wireless router are you using?
Your best bet may be to just reset the router and set it up again.
Just so you know, WEP is a very old security system for wireless and is considered insecure. If you have it available, use WPA2.

Gray screen - no external drive - tips?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for