IMac hangs before login screen - sometimes powers down

Hi,
On Thursday night my iMac hung when I woke it up and tried to use it. I couldn't remember the last reboot, so tried that first.
When it came back up, it showed me the blue screen but the login window never appeared.
I tried booting in safe mode with the same result, and on the second attempt it simply cut the power and switched off.
Suspecting the hard drive, I booted into single user mode to run fsck, but this failed.
On advice from the apple phone support people, I tried to "Archive & Install" from DVD, but when I start the install disk it tells me that OSX can't be installed on the target volume.
Finally, in the installer, I tried running Disk Utility, and all of the options fail, including, Verify, Repair and Permissions.
Is my Hard Drive dead? Is there anything else that I can try?
Many Thanks,
Taff
Message was edited by: taff22

Hi, thanks but this is not a fresh install... I've tried the other startup option and still no joy.
Next; I tried to run the iMac in target disk mode and connect it to my Mac Mini, but althought the disk showed in disk utility, it did not show on the desktop and the chap on the phone advised that this meant that it was inaccessible.
What I do have is an external USB drive with a full time machine history, so I am currently trying to restore from this after booting from the Leopard DVD... As described here:
http://duncandavidson.com/2008/01/restoring-from-time-machine.html
It's been showing me the "restoring from backup" message for a few hours now - fingers crossed it is working away and not hanging?!

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Macbook pro stuck/hangs at login screen ??

Macbook pro stuck/hangs at login screen and no any controls while i restart last time..3 days before i found many solutions but no one is perfect like PRAM/SCM format command option+p+r and other many but no any perfect solution which can fixed my issue..please help me asap i am so much upset for that coz i am developer and there is many of the data , i also run windows on it win 7 so now i am running with that i have latest 2011 mac OSX 10.7.5 with Core i5 ,4GB, 320 GB so please help me to resolve this issue i am waiting thanks in advan
Regards,
Muneeb
Developer
<Email Edited by Host>

Macbook pro stuck/hangs at login screen and no any controls while i restart last time..3 days before i found many solutions but no one is perfect like PRAM/SCM format command option+p+r and other many but no any perfect solution which can fixed my issue..please help me asap i am so much upset for that coz i am developer and there is many of the data , i also run windows on it win 7 so now i am running with that i have latest 2011 mac OSX 10.7.5 with Core i5 ,4GB, 320 GB so please help me to resolve this issue i am waiting thanks in advan
Regards,
Muneeb
Developer
<Email Edited by Host>

Win 7/Z580: Black screen on boot up, before login screen?

Win 7/Z580: Black screen on boot up, before login screen?
=======================================
I find some interesting posting in this forum. Thanks for keeping this forum to help windows/Lenovo community. I like to pick up the brain of this forum to resolve the black screen issue. I am not sure, whether it caused by virus. I use Microsoft Security Essentials. I am not able to run this in command prompt.
I started my laptop this morning & login screen showed up. Once I entered my login credentials, I heard the sound that usually plays once a login is successful, but I ended up with a black screen. After this occurred, I had to hold down the power button to manually shut down the computer. Once I started it up again, I was prompted to do a system repair, which eventually ended up with all successful outcomes, but I now have a black screen with a cursor before the login screen now. I have no idea what caused this to happen. My laptop is a Lenovo Ideapad Model Z580 (500 GB HD, 6GB RAM).
I am not able to get into safe mode or any other mode, which all leads to a black screen described above. I am able to use the "Repair Your computer" tools after pressing F8 during booting only . All other options leads to Black screen with cursor in the middle
Last Known Good Configuration leads to same
Enable Low Resolution Video (640x480) leads to same My Z580 is not responding to CTRL+ALT+DEL Windows Logo keys as well.
**** I tried SAFE Mode. It loaded couple of drivers and paused at CLASSPNP.SYS load. It went to Black screen with cursor at center.
I am able to invoke control pannel from Command prompt of working PC by typing control.
Z580 PC is not responding to control from command prompt (under Repair Your computer) either.
Z580 is able to use the "Repair Your computer" tools after pressing F8 during booting .
Under local user login it provided Start Repair option. As I pick this option, I got the following. Problem signature
Startup repair offline
1 - 6.1.7600.16385
2 -
6.1.7600.16385
3 - unknown
4 - 21200332
5 - autofailover
6 -
4
7 - NoRootCause
os v - 6.1.7600.2.1.0.2561
locale id – 1033
Under Admin user login, it provided system recovery options. It is not picking up the recovery point created a while ago.
Windows Memory Diagnostics is not launching and shows a black screen without cursor.
I am able to get into command prompt. I tried the following there.
I am not able to run cmd as admin
I reviewed the past posting of this forum on this subject.
Windows 7 boots to an unresponsive black screen with mouse cursor...
System File Checker: Run sfc /scannow & analyze its logs in Windows 7 / 8
Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service
How to analyze the log file entries that the Microsoft Windows Resource Checker (SFC.exe) program generates in Windows Vista
Force SFC to Run in Windows 7
Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them
SFC /SCANNOW showed up
"Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service
I did "net start trustedinstaller"
"Windows Resource Protection detected pending repair restart the computer"
I ran repair options using sfc /scannow /offbootdir=x:\ /offwindir=D:\windows
and got "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them "
I did findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log >sfcdetails.txt I will be glad to attach the zip file that contain CBS.LOG & [SR] tag extract (xxx.txt).
I did not any find ERRORS there, SFC ended with message saying "found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them" . It is misleading. There is no [SR] tag pointing to corrupt files. Does SFC through false positive like this?
I ran chkdsk. ResultsFile verification completed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
0 KB in bad sectors.
Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50.
It is puzzling me.
Thanks for helping.

I tried these steps 8/7/2015. I ran chkdsk. Results for D:\
File verification completed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
0 KB in bad sectors.
Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50.
Updated on 8/7
============
Here are my HDD config:
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Status Info
Volume 0 F WDO_Media64 UDF DVD- Healthy
Volume 1 C NTFS Partition Healthy
Volume 2 D Windows7_OS NTFS Partition Healthy
Volume 3 E LENOVO NTFS Partition Healthy
Volume 4 G FAT Removable Healthy
Volume 5 LENOVO_PART NTFS Partition Healthy Hidden
I ran CHKDSK /F /X for C, D, E. All resluted to "Windows has checked the file system and found no problems."
F8 ===> Repair Computer===> Command Prompt ===> Works OK
F8 ===> Repair Computer===> Start up Repair ==> Results into "Startup repair could not detect a problem"
F8 ===> Repair Computer===> System Restore ===> "No restore points has been created on yout computer system drive"
F8 ===> Repair Computer===> System Image Recovery ===> "Windows cannot find a system impage on this computer"
F8 ===> Repair Computer===> windows Memory Diagnostiyics ===> "Black screen with Cursor in the middle"
After getting into Command prompt
I run net user
User accounts for \\
Administrator Guest
The command completed with one or more errors
It did not list other users in my laptop. I do not know why? I tried under F8 ===> Repair Computer===> Command Prompt ===> Works OK
Here is the result:
- Boot with Last Known Good Configuration (F8 menu) ===> Black screen with cursor in the middle
- Restore to a prior date (System Restore) - System Restore ====> Already reported in previous reply
- Try a clean startup Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup results in
Clean Start up
D:\Windows\System32>runas /user:administrator msconfig
Enter the password for administrator:
Attempting to start msconfig as user "MININT-84TH5FG\administrator" ...
RUNAS ERROR: Unable to run - msconfig
1060: The specified service does not exist as an installed service.
- Try loading defaults in BIOS - F2 ==> f9 ==> f10 ===> Black screen with cursor in the middle
Check if explorer.exe is running and start from CTRL+ALT+DEL (task manager - new task) ===> CTRL+ALT+DEL not responding
Is anybody in this forum point me to fix? Thanks for looking into this issue.

Initial Message before login screen

I am facing a problem,
I need to display a message once before login screen, the message will be more than 200 characters I tried to use Alert and message builtin but the limitation was that only 200 characters can be displayed thru these builtins, therefore I am unable to display the message.
How Can I do that ?

You could null out the on-logon trigger and call your own Form which displays the message and the calls Logon built-in.
Regards
Grant Ronald
Forms PM

Scared to turn it off - imac reaches login screen, then shuts down

My imac recently developed a problem on startup. I see the folder icon with question mark on it for a moment (never used to see that), then it gets as far as the login screen and then goes dead. When I press the button to restart it, nothing happens. If I leave it a while, and/or reseat the power cable a couple of times then it will start ok, if I'm lucky!
So I was leaving it on all the time,which seemed ok, but I enabled the "put hard disk to sleep option" last night. This morning it went dead when I tried to bring it out of sleep mode.
I have taken the back off and checked the diagnostic LEDs. It had LED 1 on ok, and when I started it up using the internal button, it got as far as 3 LEDs, then went dead again.After going dead, no LEDs.
After trying a reset, I put the back on again and eventually (pressing the button and waiting, then trying again a few times) it started ok.
So now I have disabled the hard drive sleep option and left the computer on -I really am scared to even put it to sleep!
Sorry for the long post, but I would appreciate any advice here.
Thanks
Message was edited by: Nigel Switched

It turned out to be bad capacitors again - bulging and leaking ones in the PSU.
I am very annoyed about this as the power supply was replaced under Applecare cover just over 1 year ago, along with the midplane, which had - you've guessed it- bad capacitors that had leaked.
Anyone want an expensive doorstop?

IMac stuck on login screen.

All of a sudden, my iMac started getting stuck on the login screen. Once I enter the account name, the spinner just spins but never logs me in, and I have to power off. Once I restart the machine and get to the login screen, it allows me back into my account every single time (but gives me the warning about the computer not shutting down properly the last time). I cleaned the caches and made sure the external drive was not connected. Not sure what else I can do to resolve this ongoing problem. It does not occur on the guest account.

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter "BOOT_TIME" (without the quotes) in the search box. Note the timestamps of those log messages, which refer to the times when the system was booted. Now clear the search box and scroll back in the log to the last boot time after you had the problem. Select the messages logged before the boot, while the system was unresponsive or was failing to shut down. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V). Please include the BOOT_TIME message at the end of the log extract.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.
Step 2
Still in Console, look under System Diagnostic Reports for crash or panic logs, and post the entire contents of the most recent one, if any. In the interest of privacy, I suggest you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if present (it may not be.) Please don’t post shutdownStall, spin, or hang logs — they're very long and not helpful.

Weird graphic before login screen and laptop is VERY slow

Hello,
So I have an Early-2011 MacBook Pro 17". Lately (past 3 months) the computer has been slower (which is normal, it's getting older) but now it is just unbearably slow and for seemingly NO reason. I have meters on the menu bar that say there is pleny of RAM left and the processor is running at 2%-6%. I can't figure out for a single reason why this is happening, but it is EXTREMELY frustrating, since only 2.5 years ago I paid 3200$ for this computer.
Now there is a weird graphic that appears RIGHT before the login screen appears. I have attached a photo. I currently own an iPhone 5, iPad 4, iMac 20" (2008), MacBook Pro 17" (early 2011), and an iPod Touch 3rd Generation. I have had problems with almost all the products, but yet have remained a die-hard Apple fan. I'm beginning to question my affinity to Apple, because I could have purchased a 17" Windows computer for MUCH less and then just replaced it this year. Instead I thought this piece of junk would last me 6 years.... This is hardly looking like it will be the case, as I can barely do anything on it as of now.
It's an early-2011 MacBook Pro 17", with a 2.2GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM and a 750GB Western Digital Black hard drive running at 7200RPM.

justinjsc,
I can’t explain the weird graphic, but I can offer something to try regarding the slowdown. Boot your MacBook Pro into Recovery mode by holding down a Command key and the R key as it starts up. Once the Mac OS X Utilities menu appears, select Disk Utility. On the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, select your internal disk’s boot partition (typically called “Macintosh HD”). On the right-hand side, press the Verify Disk button if it’s not greyed out; if it is greyed out, or if it reports that errors were found, press the Repair Disk button. Once the verification/repair is completed, exit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu to restart in normal mode. Did this make any difference?
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U410 hangs at login screen with no password box or username box

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LenBlazer wrote:
A cd or usb flash drive will do. You have to go to bios and change the boot order. However, usually you don't see the cd/Dvd in the boot option so that is why I suggest using the flash drive. BTW, don't forget to disable secure boot when running the program.
@ the OP: did you disable secure boot?
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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MBA hangs on login screen after mountain lion upgrade

I have a mid 2011 macbook air. Ever since I did the upgrade to mountain lion last week, I have had about 10 instances where it hangs on the login screen. I bring it up from sleep, I see the login but when I enter my password and hit enter, it just hangs with the login box grayed. I can hit the cancel button and it gives me the ability to interact with the login box again, but will not log in. on all but one of these instances I have had to restart the machine. I have timed it to 5 minutes twice before restarting the machine to get back in. This never happened with lion. Anyone else have this issue?

I have issues also.
With a samba share on Linux, ML can see it correctly, but on my Windows Home Server 2011, if i do smb://"server address" i receive and error saying that the share dows not exist on server. Before on Lion i had a list of my shares. On finder the Server apears with a "/" which i can not open.
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IMac freezes at login screen for file server

The machine: iMac (lampshade), OS 10.3.9
The symptom: During the boot/login sequence, the machine locks up at the login screen to the file server.
If I disconnect the network cable during the boot sequence, it will error but not freeze; I can later reconnect the cable and login without a problem.
Any ideas?
James

You may want to look at this similar post:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=690609&#690609
Heres what Mac Help said.
Open System Preferences and click Startup Disk.
If necessary, click the lock icon and type the name and password for an administrator user.
Click the icon of the system folder or system volume that you want to use, then click Restart.
IMPORTANT: When selecting a network startup volume, be sure you select a valid network startup volume and not a network install image. Choosing a network install image reinstalls your system software and may erase the contents of your hard disk. A standard network volume icon appears as a globe and Mac OS X system folder. When you select a network volume icon, a message appears in the Startup pane describing the volume. A network install icon appears as a globe with downward pointing green arrow.
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Login screen sometimes without user icon & apple logo animation

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Windows XP Machine Freeze before Login Screen 2015

Has there been any Windows updates applied recently that may be causing this? Has any new hardware been added to them? A virus seems unlikely but not impossible. How old are the machines and how many is this happening to?
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You really need to look at getting off XP - it is out of support and is going to have more and more of these problems

Hi All,
Suddenly all machines running Windows XP just freezes before the login screen comes.
Windows boots up. Showing the LOGO but just before the login screen comes it just freezes.
I have performed system restore some restore and boots up but some does not restore.
On Some of the computers that have been restored successfully, this problem has reoccured. The are instance where we have formatted a machine completely, but after a while this problem reoccurs.
I am suspecting a virus but not totally sure.
Can anyone help
This topic first appeared in the Spiceworks Community

[SOLVED] Black screen halfway through boot before login screen appears

I originally installed my Arch Linux 64 system on a quad core intel cpu with 4GB RAM and a Nvidia 9600 GT graphics card. Arch is installed on 2 500 GB HDD running on software RAID and LVM. A few months ago I decided I wanted to upgrade my machine to an i7-2600K with 8 GB RAM and a Nvidia 580 GTX graphics card. Since I was using pure software RAID I knew that I could just reuse my installation. So I popped in the drives into the new machine and glory glory Arch booted just fine. One thing I notied though and this has been bothered me since then. On my old machine I could see the whole boot process from start to finish. On my new machine I only see the first few seconds and then a black screen for few seconds and then I get the login screen (KDM in my case). Now I'm running a pure systemd system and I can see the boot process until
[ok] started loading random ...
and then the black screen sets in. Why does this happen? Why can't see if udev, samba etc. start correctly anymore?
Last edited by fettouhi (2012-10-11 21:46:56)

DSpider wrote:Then remove Nouveau completely, undo any changes to mkinitcpio.conf, and re-generate your initramfs.
I don't have the nouveau driver installed at all. But I finally got rid of the black screen. I simply added nomodeset to the kernel parameters in grub and now everything ass before.

Black Screen after W7 logo before login screen - HELP!

Hi,
When I start windows, after Windows 7 start logo, I get a black screen for about 20-40
seconds, then a black screen with cursor for around 1 and a half minute and then I get the login screen, thats around after 3minutes.
I am facing this problem for quite some time now, I also did a clean windows installation
after wiping out harddisk using diskpart. But it was of no use, still I get that annoying Black Screen at startup and I think my laptop is a bit slow too. When
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I also ran Dell PC Checkup, everything is fine.
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OS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
CPU Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2410M CPU @ 2.30GHz
Motherboard Dell Inc. 0NJT03
Memory 6.00 GB
Graphics Card (1)NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M (2)Intel(R) HD Graphics Family
Sound Card (1)Realtek High Definition Audio (2)Intel(R) Display Audio

Hi，
Did you make any changes recently before this issue? Have you looked into the event viewer for any related recorded information? regarding to reinstallation, are you using a offical installation disc or an image customized by yourself? Any 3 rd party seervices
lauched on startup?
Unplug all the external devices, except mouse and keyboard and then restart the computer.
You can use this small tool Autoruns to check what is launched on a startup
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx
Meanwhile, update driver for graphic card, BIOS and chipset driver will be helpful to improve the performance of your PC.
Yolanda Zhu
TechNet Community Support

IMac hangs before login screen - sometimes powers down

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