IMac Freezes at white screen during startup

Question

Hello,
I was off of my iMac for an hour or two so my screen saver when on.  I went to wake the computer and it was frozen.  I tried using the keyboard and mouse to wake up the computer from the screen saver, but it would not work, so I powered the iMac down manually from the button on the back.  I let it sit for 15 minutes, then I tried to start the computer up again.  Now at start up, I get to a blank white screen with the spinning moving pin wheel, and that is it.  Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You could try to use SafeBoot mode on startup, essentially you'd hold the Shift
key down on startup, perhaps you may need to login after waiting quite awhile,
then continue holding the shift key down until you see a traditional desktop.
And then use Disk Utility to verify HDD, & repair disk permissions.+ Restart.
Or if you have a system install-restore DVD, boot from that and have the
Installer's version of Disk Utility check verify repair the hard disk drive.
It can also repair disk permissions, too, from the booted version of D.U.
Then when it is done, choose the startup disk from installer menu options.
The DVD should eject, but if not, it should be ignored as a boot volume
after you've chosen the Mac HD as a boot system.
PS: If your computer is now running a system later than Snow Leopard,
where no DVD would be needed if it has a Recovery partition in the HDD
then you could see about booting into Recovery (command + R) to access
the later system's OS X Utilities, and choose Disk Utility to check/repair, etc.
These may help.
Good luck!
edited