Grey screen with spinning gear

Hi all,
Have had this for a while now, when switched on i get the chime, apple logo and then goes to a blue/grey screen with the spinning gear. also at this point i get the mouse cursor which comes and goes.
Have tried all the safe mode and verbose mode.
Verbose just produces the screen shot i have attached, i left running through the night and comes up with the same message but with different time stamp
I did try and boot from my Leopard 10.5 cd but just went straight through to the grey screen.
Any help would be really appreciated

Have you seen this Apple note on gray screen/spinning wheel boots?

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Another iBook cannot get past the grey screen with spinning gear

I have read the other posts on iBooks not starting up. I too have used Onyx recently but this was to cure the problem of a freeze. Now start up cannot get past the grey screen. PRAM has been zapped and safe mode will not work. Worse, the CD drive will take CDs so cannot go back to start up disk.
Bizarrely, a visit to the Apple Store and the iBook started no problem. System was reinstalled using archive option and various health checks apparently showed no problems. But then got back home and again start up froze at grey screen with spinning gear. I have left it on this for over 15 minutes but to no avail. I have tried to connect to another ibook using T key to get target mode. I'm not sure if I am doing this right. I have started up working iBook plugged in the firewire to both machines and then started up ailing iBook holding down T key. 2nd iBook wont start at all.
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An Archive and Install will preserve you user settings and data. You will need a minimum of 5 GB free on the hard drive to perform an A&I; you can reduce the space required by about 1 GB by selecting the option to install language support only for the language you use (assuming you don't need multiple languages).
However, after seeing your other post (BTW, it'll be easier to keep track if relted issues are in the same thread), you do not want to try an A&I if Disk Utility is reporting anything about 'could not be repaired'. Doing so will would ensure problems down the road, if it worked at all. It's possible for one disk problem to mask another. Whenever Disk Utility (or any other repair utility) reports making repairs, it's good practice to repeat the repair until it reports no problems found or it becomes clear it cannot repair the disk.
DiskWarrior has an excellent track record at repairing problems that Disk Utility cannot (especially Disk Utility versions prior to OS X 10.4.2).
If the drive cannot be repaired, you may be able to keep it by doing an erase install with the write zeros (one pass) option. That will update the hard drive firmware record of bad disk sectors to avoid using. If there are only a few bad sectors, that may let you keep using the hard drive for several more years. An erase install will do just that to your data, through. If you have access to another Mac with either a large amount of free disk space of a DVD burner, you can try using the other Mac as host and the eMac as target in FireWire target disk mode. You can run the host's copy of Disk Utility on the eMac hard drive, and hopefully be able to mount the emac HD so that you can back up the data in your Home directory.

Brand new MacBook Pro doesn't get past grey screen (with spinning gear)

Hello,
I'm a new Apple customer - I bought a new 15" MacBook Pro during the Black Friday sale last week. Since purchase, I've installed the software I needed (Office, CS4) and have used it to browse the web and write emails.
Today when I tried to use it, I simply got to the grey screen with the Apple logo on it and the spinning gear device underneath - got absolutely no further.
I have done the following (running from mains adaptor - but the battery indicator is reporting 7 lights anyhow):
1. Boot from the OSX Install Disc, and run the disc repair utility. It reported no problems found. Restarted... same problem.
2. Boot holding down SHIFT to go into safe mode. Underneath the spinning gears, a progress bar filled up to 100% and then disappeared; leaving the grey screen, logo, and spinning gears. Nothing further.
3. Boot holding Option, P, R as per the manual to reset the PRAM. According to the manual there should have been a chime/beep - there wasn't. It just sits on the grey screen, logo, spinning gears. Nothing further.
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Definitely take it back!
My friend bought a new iMac from the Regents St. store a few weeks ago, just before the update to the new models came out, and after a week she couldn't get it to boot. I felt very embarrassed as I had persuaded to her to switch to Mac after years of PC woes, so a broken mac after a week didn't look do me any favours. The genius guys didn't mess around, they took back the dead one and gave her a new one, this time she got the new version, they also threw in iWork free as a good will gesture. New one is running fine.
If you haven't already got Applecare, I highly recommend buying it within the next 12 months. I have needed it on a couple of occasions after the standard warranty ran out and the tech support has been brilliant, got me working again no quibbles.

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Have you seen this Apple note on gray screen/spinning wheel boots?

Always Shuts down at gray screen with spinning gear

Hi All
I think this may be a serious problem
Macbook was working fine then during downloading an app I got a message 'do you want to shutdown' i clicked cancel but re appeared with same message.
I shut down macbook and restarted and booted up to grey screen with spinning gear then off, the whole macbook switched off. I tried to reboot but everytime it switched off at the same point.
I tried to boot from DVD install disk but done the same, tried booting into safe mode but shut off at about 25% on the loading bar. Have reset everything and tried again but still the same prob.
Replaced the hard drive with a spare which had windows 7 on, still didnt allow me to boot from dvd disk but it stopped at the message ' do you want to start windows in safe mode' along with all the other options. I left it at that screen for about 45 mins and the ,acbook never switched off. So i now figured I may have a bad DVD osx disk, A frien of mine has Mountain lion on usb stick, so i borrowed and booted from the usb, got to the screen with the spinning gear and then....it switched off.
Checked fan while booting and all seems fine.
So my question is why is it shutting down, also why does it not shutdown before the spinning gear screen. It cant be over heating as above i fitted a hdd with win7 on and left it at the prompt for 45 mins.
Many thanks for looking
laurie

Hi Nance,
Welcome to the Discussions.
Put Install Disc 1 in the drive and start while holding down the "c" key. Select Disk Utility from the Installer menu, click on the drive on the left and click on Repair Disk. If it reports errors and repairs, repeat the process until no errors are reported.
Post back the results and any unrepaired error messages.
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Hi guys
I have an intel-based imac and when i performed routine updates on it, it took long to switch off so i manually turned it off with the button. Normally this gives no problem, but this time it refuses to go past the grey screen with the apple logo and spinning gear. I have tried many of the fixes but to no avail...does anyone have any step by step instructions/suggestions...I cant get to any of my uni work. I tried disk utility and it said my hard drive is fine, yet when i restart im back to the grey screen!
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Message was edited by: Debbie Wach

Hi Debbie/Gregg -
I may have missed something but can't you just put a new hard drive in your laptops? You may not be able to recover your data but it doesn't mean the end for your computer. The same thing happened to my TiBook and I put a new 120Gig hard drive in and it's had a new lease of life.
I bought a new internal hard drive along with an external enclosure and connected it up to my computer and from there cloned it. Then I transferred the external into the TiBook and put the old drive into the external and I use that as an external now. I realise your hard drives are dead but you could use another computer to so the same thing and just install the OS on it.
I bought this -
http://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/productinfo.php?productsid=452
Then followed the instructions here -
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/PowerBook-G4-Ti-DVI/HD-Replacement/33/6/
Once your new hard drive is installed you may be able to try and repair the old one in the external enclosure?

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