Gray screen on 2 different minis

I had the Gray screen on boot up on two seperate minis this morning. Pulling all the usb items fixed both of them. Anyone else having this issue?

Yes, that says the USB items aren't likely to be compatible with the boot sequence. They need the drivers to load completely before being connected. Also some aren't compatible with Energy Saver, and can cause problems waking from sleep.

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My user account doesnt show up when turned on, just a gray screen on my Mac mini.

My user account doesnt show up when turned on, just a gray screen on my Mac mini. Please help. I have lots of unsaved data on it.

Gello, see if this works...
If 10.7.0 or later...
Bootup holding CMD+r, or the Option/alt key to boot from the Restore partition & use Disk Utility from there to Repair the Disk.

Gray screen on mac mini - how can i fix? won't boot up. Help!

I have been getting a gray screen on my mac mini - has apple symbol in the middle and moving gear below it. Doesn't go any farther than that. Have tried unplugging everything and rebooting, removed all extras that were plugged in, went to a wired (non apple) mouse and keyboard, tried the "shift" while booting up. Can anyone help me get this mini up and running again? Don't remember getting a start up disc with it so I can't reboot using the disc. Help!

Reinstalling Lion/Mountain 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/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Mac pro is stuck on gray screen

Ok I think this month has been the worst month of my life. My Mac Pro showed me the gray screen with a question mark on it. I took it to the apple store and they told me NOTHING can be done for me other then install a new hard drive ( so untill today 2 weeks ago I am still trying to retrieve my photos from my hard drive I took it to a place where they asked for $6K to do that ) I installed a new hard drive last week and installed every thing I need and yesterday in the morning my computer gave me the ORDER to shut downwith that dark gray screen with many different languages so I obeyed the MAC I shut down and turned it back on, then later that same night it told me to shut down again so I did and just NOW when I went to turn it on it got stuck on the GRAY screen. WHAT is happening? my comp. is on 10.6.8 can someone plse help me. I am LOST. ever since I bought this computer I had my main hard drive changed twice and my power supply was changed 1 year and half to 2 yrs ago.

The Directory on the Hard drive can get messed up. In 10.4, the cleanest way to deal with that is to boot from the Installer DVD, but do not Install. Wait a quarter minute for the menuBar to be drawn, then choose Disk Utility off the Menu.
Chose your Hard drive by Hardware_name and ( Repair Disk ).
When you are done, choose Set Starup Disk, and use it to set your startup disk and then Restart.

Mac Mini Stuck at Gray Screen

Hi, I have an Intel based mac mini running 10.4.6 I believe what ever is the latest tiger version. Upon restarting after installed updates computer can not go past the apple logo with the spinning wheel underneath it. I have restarted and tried all of the different key combinations the only one it will recognize is the option key. I have used the option key to select the c drive where the operating system is installed but it goes right back to being stuck at gray screen. I have used the option key to also let me use the install disc to run disk utility and repair the disc which said volume is verified and repaired and good to go. Only thing I haven't tried is firewire boot but at this point I don't think thats the right answer. Im thinking its hardware issue any ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for taking the time to help me out- Ryan

Will it start up in Safe mode?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455
If it can start up in Safe mode, that would point to a problem specific to your account, and probably a Login Item given that it hangs the way it does at the gray screen with spinny wheel. In that case, take a look at this procedure, too.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/21210.html

Mac mini stuck at gray screen HELP!!!!!!!!!

Hi,
i have my mac mini stuck at a gray screen can you help me

Take each of these steps that you haven't already tried. Stop when the problem is resolved.
Step 1
The first step in dealing with a boot failure is to secure your data. If you want to preserve the contents of the startup drive, and you don't already have at least one current backup, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data that has changed since your last backup, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is unable to boot. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
a. Boot into the Recovery partition, or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) When the OS X Utilities screen appears, launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.”
b. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, boot the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
c. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.
Step 2
Sometimes a boot failure can be resolved by resetting the NVRAM.
Step 3
If you use a wireless keyboard, trackpad, or mouse, replace or recharge the batteries. The battery level shown in the Bluetooth menu item may not be accurate.
Step 4
If there's a built-in optical drive, a disc may be stuck in it. Follow these instructions to eject it.
Step 5
Press and hold the power button until the power shuts off. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed to boot, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Use a different keyboard and/or mouse, if those devices are wired. If you can boot now, one of the devices you disconnected, or a combination of them, is causing the problem. Finding out which one is a process of elimination.
If you've booted from an external storage device, make sure that your internal boot volume is selected in the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences.
Step 6
Boot in safe mode. Note: If FileVault is enabled, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Post for further instructions.
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
When you boot in safe mode, it's normal to see a dark gray progress bar on a light gray background. If the progress bar gets stuck for more than a few minutes, or if the system shuts down automatically while the progress bar is displayed, your boot volume is corrupt and the drive is probably malfunctioning. In that case, go to Step 6.
If you can boot and log in now, empty the Trash, and then open the Finder Info window on your boot volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name.) Check that you have at least 9 GB of available space, as shown in the window. If you don't, copy as many files as necessary to another volume (not another folder on the same volume) and delete the originals. Deletion isn't complete until you empty the Trash again. Do this until the available space is more than 9 GB. Then reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode.)
If the boot process hangs again, the problem is likely caused by a third-party system modification that you installed. Post for further instructions.
Step 7
Launch Disk Utility in Recovery mode (see Step 1.) Select your startup volume, then run Repair Disk. If any problems are found, repeat until clear. If Disk Utility reports that the volume can't be repaired, the drive has malfunctioned and should be replaced. You might choose to tolerate one such malfunction in the life of the drive. In that case, erase the volume and restore from a backup. If the same thing ever happens again, replace the drive immediately.
This is one of the rare situations in which you should also run Repair Permissions, ignoring the false warnings it may produce. Look for the line "Permissions repair complete" at the end of the output. Then reboot as usual.
Step 8
Reinstall the OS. If your Mac was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade.
Step 9
Repeat Step 6, but this time erase the boot volume in Disk Utility before installing. The system should automatically reboot into the Setup Assistant. Follow the prompts to transfer your data from a Time Machine or other backup.
Step 10
This step applies only to models that have a logic-board ("PRAM") battery: all Mac Pro's and some others (not current models.) Both desktop and portable Macs used to have such a battery. The logic-board battery, if there is one, is separate from the main battery of a portable. A dead logic-board battery can cause a boot failure. Typically the failure will be preceded by loss of the settings for the startup disk and system clock. See the user manual for replacement instructions. You may have to take the machine to a service provider to have the battery replaced.
Step 11
If you get this far, you're probably dealing with a hardware fault. Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store, or go to another authorized service provider.

Mac Mini Lost to Gray Screen

I recently purchased a 1.25 GHz mini and started the upgrade process. I immediately saw a few glitches I had intended to quickly fix. I installed onyx to check the drive and os with no errors, however I noticed when I went to connect to the internet and download the updates for 10.4 it would quit halfway through the install, so I downloaded the update to my macbook and transferred the file and the install failed. Then I noticed that other programs would fail without notice so I decided it was time to reinstall. I made the error of opting to erase the install since there was nothing loaded or saved I intended to keep. However, it failed the install. I can get it to begin the install but it encounters errors almost immediately and quits. Now, when I boot it up without an istall disc inserted, it goes to a gray screen with a changing small image in the center rotating between the different mac application icons. I am stuck with no OS and an inability to load a new one. I installed my OS 10.5.1 family pack dvd and tried to run the disk check utility and it gave me the error that it could not unmount the disc.
Any help you can offer is much appreciated. Thank you.

If you can't even get the OS to install from an OS X installation disk onto a newly formatted drive, that is definitely a problem. That source disk error sounds strange because it sounds like the installer is telling you the OS X DVD has problems. Does it look scratched or anything like that? Fingerprints maybe? Can you get another OS X DVD installer disk to try?

Mac Mini won't boot, distorted startup chime, gray screen

Hi all --
I've seen similar posts (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12170891&#12170891) but thought I'd start a new one, mainly because I haven't heard anyone mention the startup chime.
I woke up my 2007 stock Mac Mini Friday morning and the cursor was frozen. Unplugged and replugged the mouse to no avail. Couldn't force quit, so I had to power down. Restarted with a badly distored startup chime (not "speaker breakup" from excessive volume, just distortion, and some "stuttering") and a gray screen that didn't go away. Restarted many, many times. Inserted Snow Leopard DVD to run Disc Utility but it wasn't recognized -- just a gray screen. Tried resetting the PMU and SMC with no results. Tried booting into single-user mode (with a wired USB keyboard) to eject the DVD, but no luck. Tried open firmware, but nothing. Once in an while I would get the Apple icon and a spinning progress bar that never went away.
Took it to the Genius Bar, where they tried to boot from a Firewire drive, with no success. The best they could do was tell me my 17-month old Mac was out of warranty. That confirmed, I took it home, cracked it open and removed the Snow Leopard DVD (with a credit card) to insert the install disc it shipped with. That didn't work. A couple of times it looked like it would, but then after the spinning bar I got the multilingual system bomb message. Tried to run Hardware Test, but nothing. Put in original Disc 2... and that gave me a flashing folder! Progress! Forced the DVD out and slipped in Disc 1. That started to read, and then I got some kernel-panic looking text and a shutdown. My last attempt was to create a USB boot drive from the original install discs, but my old Sawtooth won't let me run the installer.
Is there any hope at this point? I just bought the thing last May, so I've had it less than a year and a half. The distorted startup chime makes me think the logic board is fried and no amount of fooling with the startup drive will make a difference. The only thing out of the ordinary in this case was that it went to sleep last Thursday night with a DV camera hooked up via Firewire.
I'm not thrilled about giving Apple any more money for another Mini, but I'm heavily invested in Logic Studio so I don't have much of a choice of platform.
I'm pretty sure I'm doomed, but I thought I'd post anyway. A quick internet search shows I'm not the only one with the gray screen of death on a fairly new Mini. Thanks in advance for any pointers.

Thanks.
The Genius was able to get to the Apple logo and spinning... thing (what used to be the beachball). His theory was that as long as the Snow Leopard disc was in there, the boot process would never get to the Firewire port. Once I got home I literally pried the Snow Leopard disc out and put in the original install disc. But any progress whatsoever ends in the system bomb message.
Thing is, I had tried to eject the disc by booting with the mouse button down. But on restarting, the laser in the optical mouse flashes quickly, once. I don't think the USB ports are going "live" at all... so I can't get into single user mode, safe mode, hardware test, anything. The Genius' keyboard was no help in that regard. So yeah, I suspect a hardware problem.
A search of "gray screen of death" shows this happening to a lot of models.

Mac mini mid 2011 boot stops at gray screen

I have a mid 2011 mini running 10.9.5 that's stopping at a gray screen. Waiting for it hasn't worked yet
On start up I get the apple logo, the wriggling worm and after a bit the screen goes black for a few seconds then comes up gray and is completely unresponsive,\.
I tried to restart, for some reason I no longer remember and Moneydance repeatedly cancelled the restart. I held the power button to take it down and now I got nothin A hard take down is the only thing that works
While I was writing this I got a flag that says it's looking for a bluetooth keyboard. It had it until I turned the laptop on. I unlocked the keyboard laptop link and it connected to the mini, but still no other response
I want to scream

Thanks for answering.
I haven't tried it with a wired keyboard yet. I don't have one and won't before tomorrow.
The apple bluetooth keyboard will put this laptop in safe mode without a hitch. One problem is I normally have the speaker off and as a result I don't hear the chime.
I clicked on the link you posted and read the page you recommended. It's helpful, but there's a problem. If I can't get it into safe mode, I won't be able to get it into target mode either, will I?
It's not an emergency and I'm not desperate. I have two terabyte disks running in tandem on time machine so I haven't lost anything but a little more hair. Everything else is in the cloud.
If there's an answer to this short of a trip to the genius temple I'd like to know what it is.
Thanks again. All thoughts are valuable.
chas

MacBook pro will not boot. I get the gray screen, an apple icon and spinning wheel. Tried to start in safe mode but get the same screen. The only thing different was that I loaded the zedge sync app yesterday. Now getting this problem.

Macbook pro will not boot. I get the gray screen, an apple icon and spinning wheel. I tried to start in safe mode, but get this same screen. The only thing different is that I added the zedge update app to do a sync for adding ringtones to my apple cell phone. How can I get a good boot. I am fairly new to apple computer.

Reset PRAM: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4405 and then try a normal boot.
Run the Startup Manager to select Startup disk: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1310
If those did not work your disk may be sick or dying. The top priority at this point is to make a backup copy of your data.
Check the health of the disk. Boot in Recovery Mode (Boot, Command-R). Run Disk Utility. Click on the upper left disk icon. Does the S.M.A.R.T. status say “Verified”? If not the disk/SSD is unhealthy and needs to be replaced. Even if it does not show “Verified” you can still attempt a backup.
Click on the icon indented below, usually called “Macintosh HD” and Verify Disk. If it finishes with a green “OK” message then all is well with the disk. If it shows errors in red then you have found a problem to address once the system is backed up. Do not attempt software repairs until you have secured the data.
If the disk will not show up at all in Disk Utility as your ran the tests above then it may be dead or it may have a bad internal SATA cable. A trip to an Apple store for confirmation would be in order.
If you have an external disk drive you can use as a backup drive then do so. If not Google “Hitachi USB 3.0 external hard drive 1TB” to purchase one or go to a brick-and-mortar store (including an Apple store) to pickup one. Any 1 TB external drive will do.
Assuming it is still breathing you can try to recover the data without booting from the sick disk.
Reformat the external disk. (This will erase all data on the external disk.)
Boot in Recovery Mode. Start Disk Utility. Plug in the new disk. Select it’s disk Icon (the second one down, left justified). Select the Partition tab.
Partition Layout > Single Partition
Name: Emergency Recovery 1 (or whatever name you wish to use)
Format: Mac OS Extended (journaled)
Options… > GUID Partition Table > OK
Apply
Select the Restore tab.
Drag the old system volume (Macintosh HD) to Source.
Drag the new disk volume (Emergency Recovery 1) to Destination.
Click on Restore.
It may take a long time for the backup.
If that will not complete post back for other emergency data recovery methods, including those from a brody.
If the backup succeeds, use the First Aid tab in Disk Utility to select the old volume (Macintosh HD) and Repair Disk. If it does not finish with a green OK message try to repair it once or twice more. If it repairs with a green OK message, will it boot normally? If not, boot from the Recovery Partition and reinstall OS X.
If it is still not healthy, post back for further instructions.

Bought a new HD for my Mac mini, and now i can not do anything, i press com r and nothing appears, only gray screen and then appears a folder with a ? in it, can anyone help me how to solve this. Thank you

ought a new HD for my Mac mini, and now i can not do anything, i press com r and nothing appears, only gray screen and then appears a folder with a ? in it, can anyone help me how to solve this. Thank you

Thank you so much for your attention, it is allready working well.

Snow Leopard Server on brand new Mini; Gray screen

I installed Snow Leopard Server on a new Mini. The install went fine. Shut the mini down. Started it up about 24 hours later, and I get to the gray screen and that's it.
I exchanged the mini for a new one. Installed Snow Leopard Server on the new one. Install went fine. Ran updates. Restarted the mini several times with no problem. Shut it down, waited 24 hours, and now it's the gray screen again.
Now what?

There's a huge thread on this (client, not server, but same concept) which you can find here.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3209335?tstart=30

Non-booting Mac mini (stuck at gray screen with no Apple logo or others)

We've got a G4 Mac mini whose motherboard was recently replaced. I've put it back together carefully following the instructions on pbfixit.com, but I can't get it to boot.
When powered on, the chime sounds normal, and the screen comes on after a few seconds with a gray background--no Apple log, no spinner, no error, no flashing icons, nothing.
I've already zapped the PRAM 3 times using OptCmd+PR, no go.
I'm able to get into OpenFirmware using OptCmd+OF and have done reset-nvram and reset-all, restarting the machine, but no luck. The system date remains current also, indicating perhaps it's not resetting the PRAM either way somehow.
The disc drive won't accept a boot CD or DVD as if it's unpowered, but it's snugly connected.
I'm unsure what to test next. Suggestions? Thanks.

Greetings,
I just had the exact same problem with a Mini. Would only boot to a gray screen no matter what I did. Booting into the OpenFirmware did help, booting into the Startup utility (by holding "T" down at startup showed no hard drive and no CD/DVD drive.
Hold on to your hat . . . .
The issue was the battery. These guys have a Lithium battery that allows them to boot up, a battery that can be purchased anywhere that sells those kinds of thing. I bought 2 for $3.50, it was more time and trouble to get into the case and get at the logic board but once the battery was replaced everything works like a dream.
Here is an excellent step-by-step tutorial about getting into the case http://www.sterpin.net/uk/ddMacMiniuk.htm. Just make sure that doing so doesn't void any warranties.
Good Luck!
Gail

Mini Mac Boots to Gray Screen and thats it

So heres the deal. I got my girlfriend a mac mini core solo for Christmas. She bought herself a LCD and a wireless keyboard and mouse. She got the Microsoft Wireless Optical 3000. She plugged in the wireless receiver and then started her mac for the first time. The keyboard was apparently working, but none of the keys mapped correctly. So, my girlfriend meticulously figured out which key mapped to what and she went through the mac setup process. She got done and was put to the mac desktop. She inserted the wireless keyboard cd and installed the software that came with it. It prompted her to restart and she pressed restart and the mac restarted. Now, it goes to a gray screen, but with no log and nothing happens. The cd drive spins up and goes crazy. I cant get the cd to eject at all either.
I took the mac to my house and switched it out for my mac. I used all known working keyboard/mouse and monitor that I use for my mini mac and nothing happens still.
Please HELP! It was used for 15 minutes!
Mini Mac Core Solo

Shaxs, welcome!
Sorry to hear about your gift going wrong.
To get the disc out, you should be able to eject it by starting the Mini and holding down the mouse button until it pops out. Unless configuring the wireless keyboard messed up the Mini's idea of what a mouse button is.
Hopefully you can then boot from the install DVD by powering up while holding down the C key. Again, that might be problematic if C isn't where it used to be.
Since they haven't made the Core Solo model for a while, was this a refurb?

Attempting safe boot--gray screen stuck with apple symbol--

So, left Imac on over weekend with Itunes playing in continuous mode--when I got home (about 36 hrs later) the screen was good but Itunes had locked up and was the Imac was making a stuttering sound (not like a hard drive clicking but like the songs were stuck). The mouse was frozen but the arrow was visible--only way I could get out was to use the power button to force it to shut down. Since then, I get the gray screen when it boots (not using any shortcut keys during reboot) and it sticks there with the eventual appearance of the perpetual spinning circle under it. When I boot using all the tricks I can think of, safe boot (hoping to get to safe mode) I get everything from a gray screen with the apple but w/o the spinning circle (that's from safe boot attempt) to choosing the drive to boot from which reveals a text message that instructs me to reboot and another effort gives a page long text of information that begins with "kernel fail" laid over a gray screen w/o the apple logo, and several other options result in the screen staying black. One screen asked me to type "mac-boot" and enter but nothing new happened. Once I got the screen to come up solid gray with a single black line (running the width of the screen horizontally) about 2/3 from the top of the screen. I have tried booting with every peripheral removed (even tried it with multiple keyboards and mice--even w/o a mouse and keyboard). Tried the PRAM and SMC. The dvd drive is non-functional and has been for more than a year--(different issue) it won't even open (it's the Imac with the pod base and 15 inch screen all in one look from a few years ago)--just wanted to let that be known because I can't put the OS disk in--it's been upgraded to Lion from the original Panther--I think?
Anyway, looking for solutions, ideas etc...Thank you.

I had that same thing happen to me when I was updating my iPhone to iOS 5! What I did was I just kept resetting and resetting and holding down the home and power buttons until 3 in the morning. (ok, maybe it was only midnight but it sure FELT like 3 AM!) Anyway, I would just keep at it until it decides it wants to cooperate. Mine eventually did.

Gray screen on 2 different minis

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