IMac G4 starts up to gray apple screen progress wheel, then shuts down.

I was trying to boot to an external drive when this started. I was holding down key combinations (I think at the time it was Option-Command-Del), and the screen went black. Power Off.
Now, even after resetting PRAM and PMU, among other things, the same process occurs:
1) I press Power Button.
2) Chimes.
3) Gray screen, progress wheel. Little sound inside. Wheel stops.
4) iMac shuts off by itself.
When trying Verbose mode, I see it says "CPU Halted" the second before it shuts off.
Any ideas, masters of mac?

Try using Disk Utility to repair your startup disk (hard drive) as shown in Dr.Smokes Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption.
It's worth trying the repairs several times with fsck or DU, you never know. But, more then likely you will need a more robust utility, DiskWarrior, to repair that fairly serious error. It costs a few bucks, but if your data is worth saving DW may fix it.
We always recommend users, here, have at least one backup drive. I have two bootable backups. I have had backups also go bad, so two seems safer to me!
Cheers!
DALE

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MBP won't boot - Grey Apple Screen, Spinning Wheel, then Shut Down

Help please
For no apparent reason, my otherwise well-working MBP (2007 model) simply won't log in to OSX (leopard). I try to boot it up, and I get the grey screen with the Apple logo, the spinning progress wheel, and then after about 4 minutes, it just powers off.
Thoughts?

adammabry wrote:
I ran verify because the option to run repair was not available.
And just to make sure, you booted from the install disc? (Repair Disk is never available when booted on the boot volume of the HD.)
Here's a follow up... This mac wasn't doing it's airport backups properly,
I'm not quite sure what that means, maybe Time Machine? Time Capsule?
so I don't have a recent back up of the files. Would you suggest just sending the computer to a data recovery service?
Very expensive. Try FireWire Target Disk Mode first. If that doesn't work, I'd remove the HD, install it in an external enclosure (as low as $15) and see if it will boot the MBP or the data is accessible from another Mac.
Do you think I can just pop a new HD in it and it'll work fine under a full reinstall?
Doing my previous suggestions first may help to answer that. If there's absolutely nothing wrong with the HD, then that isn't the issue. If there is something wrong with it, likely a new HD is the fix.

Older model iMac. Grey screen, no tones, apple logo and spinner, then shuts down. Tried all greyscreen tips on Apple Website. Suggestions?

Older model iMac. Grey screen, no tones, apple logo and spinner, then shuts down. Tried all greyscreen tips on Apple Website. Do not have start up disc. Do not know what OS it runs. Suggestions?

Since you don't have a startup disc you haven't done ALL of the tips on this page http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570
I don't know what you've done but you need to follow the tips listed and that could include possibly erasing and reinstalling the OS. Older model iMac does nothing to help us understand what you're working with. You can call Apple and provide them with your serial number and for a fee they'll ship you a set of original install discs or you could possibly use Snow Leopard which you can get for $20 here http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard
You can enter the serial number here for specs on the iMac http://www.everymac.com
And if you don't know where to find the serial number see here http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1349

I have a mac OS X and when I close it and reopen my screen opens and then shuts down for an instant and then reopens. Does anyone have this occur?? I have shutdown and restarted often.

I have a mac OS X and when I close it and reopen my screen opens and then shuts down for an instant and then reopens. Does anyone have this occur?? I have shutdown and restarted often.

A Safe Mode boot might help ..
Startup your Mac in Safe Mode
A Safe Mode boot takes much longer than a normal boot so be patient.
Once you are in Safe Mode, click Restart from the Apple () menu.
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Hi
My imac 5.i freezes or has a spinning coloured wheel and locks up, or the screen goes white or shuts down on it's own .
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Hello:
Try resetting the PRAM and SMC.
If it continues, take it in for service.
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AFTER UPDATE GREY SCREEN NO SOUND THEN SHUTS DOWN AFTER 30 SECONDS PLEASE HELP

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As for now, only thing that helped was an archive and install with preserve user settings. Seems after the reinstall of 10.4. everything that was weird has become normal again. I hope very much this state stays on for a while - or ever!
A comment to everybody: with problems that are common you get a lot of help from friendly users in here, but if like in my situation things get a bit more uncommon than the usual querks and troubles your bound to go through a whole workflow of tests and algorithms - i did learn some new things but eventually I had to go for the ultimate - the reinstall (of course, erase and install would have been more work.) and it's frustrating not to find out how it came to this problem. I wish I could nail it down to something I did mistakenly - i guess I'll find out next time.
THANKS THOUGH to those who replied.
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MacBook Pro will not go past login screen/gray screen/gray Apple screen. Wheel keeps spinning.

I am pretty frustrated right now as anyone would be if this happened.
I was installing Anti-Virus onto my MacBook Pro and the installation finished but the computer froze. I force restarted the computer and it went all the way into my desktop, I could click on certain things but it was loading INCREDIBLY slow. The Anti-Virus opened and everything but the computer was just running much to slow and then froze again.
I hard reset the computer again because it was frozen. The first time I hard reset it went all the way to the login screen, I put my password in and the wheel would just spin. It just keeps spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning.
I hard reset the computer again. This time it gets to the Apple logo with the spinning under the logo. Just keeps spinning.
I hard reset the computer again. This time it gets past the spinning under the logo and isn't doing anything.
I hard reset the computer again. Get's all the way to the log in password screen, doesn't even let me put the password in just keeps spinning.
I continued to hard reset and get different screens each time.
I booted into safe mode. Did absolutely nothing for me but run incredibly slow and lag. I am not sure if that is normal or not, as I have never safe booted on a Mac. I reinstalled Mountain Lion after going into I think it was Recovery Mode (Command + R) and that did absolutely nothing for me after waiting over an hour. So now I am very frustrated as I need to do work for my class and this is just a major problem.
I even tried doing the Command + Option + P + R or whatever it was to reset those settings. Nothing is working.
Final projects and computers that don't want to work are not good.

Are you not able to install OS X, then? That is, the reinstall procedure does not work? If so, then you need to erase the drive then reinstall OS X.
Install or Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion from Scratch
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard 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.
Erase the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the
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3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on
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4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
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The progress bar usually indicates it is attempting a Safe Boot, which does clear some Caches. It doesn't erase the memory.
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My son's ipod gets a solid color screen or a stripe screen and then shows the apple sign and freezes. When it comes back to his lock screen he has lost whatever game he was playing on. Help? I have reset the ipod but that didn't help.

Try:
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Thank you for your help, although that didn't seem to do anything either. It just started working again today, yay!
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I have a PB G4 that won't start. It shows the gray apple screen, shows the blue screen, and then goes black. The sleep light pulses. From there, I can't turn it off normally. I have tried restarting the PMU. And I have tried unplugging the ac adaptor and removing the battery. From there I have plugged only the ac adaptor in, and it will begin to start but do the same thing once it shows the blue screen.
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I need something very important from this computer. And was able to start it last night. I did not shut down the computer, and was going to take it to a friends to use his printer today. The computer was in sleep mode in the morning.
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What your describing could be a logic board or memory issue.
You did or did not hear 3 startup chimes? If you hear 3 chimes when you start it, that would indicate a memory problem. Try reseating the memory to see if that makes a difference. If you have 2 RAM cards, try one then the other in each slot. If you have 1 RAM card, move it to the other slot. Powerbooks can develop one bad slot.
You may need to pull the hard drive out of the Powerbook, put it into an external case, then read it from another mac.

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I just installed an Airport Extreme card on my eMac (USB 2.0). When I try to boot, it gets stuck on the gray Apple screen, with the spinning gray "spokes." The card is pushed as far as it will go into the slot, and the antenna is all the way in as well. When I take the card out, the computer boots up fine. I tried installing the software first, but it doesn't appear to be installed after it does the required restart for new software. I'm not sure if I have the software already...
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IMac G4 starts up to gray apple screen progress wheel, then shuts down.

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