Imac not booting.

I have updated the Lion and when I've rebooted my Imac, it's just white screen. What can I do?

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Gray screen appears during startup

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IMac not booting up... need help!!

Hey guys,
I got an update from apple yesterday for I believe it was a new update for quicktime, and after installing and rebooting I found that I had no control over the menubar and the dock, as I could not access anything the only thing I could think of doing is holding down the power button to restart. After doing this my iMac would not boot up past the initial apple logo boot screen and would just freeze at that, i've tried everything I could think of and have had no sucess.
If anyone can help me with some advice it would be much appreciated!
Many Thanks,
Richard Walker.
p.s. I have a broken superdrive and i am running the latest version of leopard.

amitabh wrote:
It seems odd that apple would send out an update that would cause this kind of a problem.
I can assure you that the problem is with you not the update. Remember this is a place for Mac users to come to with issues. The vast majority of us install our updates without a problem, primarily because of how out machines are maintained. I can only suggest contacting an Apple repair centre to have your Superdrive replaced so you can reinstall OSX. Whatever you decide, when you finally get things back, invest in a 3rd party Disk Utility like DiskWarrior as it's an excellent tool. By running it regularly as part of a maintenance routine, when you come to run updates in future, you shouldn't find yourself here again as a result. Good Luck.

Sudden screen lines + iMac not booting

Hi everyone:
I have an 24" Intel iMac, only 4 month with it, it was working normally then I left and my computer entered sleep mode, when I came back I prssed the keyboard to wake my computer the screen was black with green stains, I did reset, and on the boot screen with the apple logo it has lots of vertical lines and Leopard not booting instead it stays on a blue screen with white stains, I did hardware test, on it it showed the red lines but when I move the mouse over them they dissapear and on a space without lines thay appear again... Hardware Teast said it was all ok, I tried to boot from the Leopard Instalation Disk but it doesn't work neither, it finishes in the same blue with white stains screen, I don't know what esle to do...
Help much apreciated!
-Eric Bartolome

Ok, I discovered I can enter Fail Safe boot, I'll try updating Mac OS now...

11' iMac Not booting

I have a 2011 iMac 27" and it will not boot. It currently runs (ran) OS 10.8.4 and when its boots it displays the apple logo, the loading swirl, and a progress bar on the bottom of the screen, and when the progress bar fills, it disappears, and the computer continues to sit at the grey apple loading screen. When I booted using the disk selector (Option on startup) instead of saying Macintosh HD it now says EFI Boot along with the standard Recovery Drive. AHT test come back with no problems. This computer contains very important information, so hopefully it hasn't damaged any of that. What is it that i can do to fix this problem
Thank You
Macman45

Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup

IMac not booting from HD, cannot repair disc in Disk Utility

First the problem:
I've had the imac G5 for nearly two years and its been running without a problem, now it suddenly wouldn't start up. Firstly I get two or three grey screens in succession looking as if being drawn from top to bottom very quickly, then the apple logo and timer, after a minute or so the fans start up to full power and it stays that way.
What I've tried:
Reading around discussions I tried rebooting from DVD installer and using disk utility. Result: error message: The underlying task reported failure on exit. 1 volume could not be repaired because of an error.
Because I want to sell the imac I had backed up all of my important data so I zero-wrote the hard drive in preferrence to buying a third party repair package. Reinstalled from DVD. Shut down and restarted. Everything worked except those banding grey screens appeared that were never there before. Something looks wrong. Then when i tried to reinstall microsoft office (as a test) the OS seemed to freeze and I had to shut it down again. Now it won't boot up as before. This looks like a very serious problem.
I hesitate to buy tech tool pro in case that doesn't solve it either.
Can't think if I did something to cause this. All I've been doing is transferring some data via ethernet to a newer mac. There was also a Lacie firewire drive linked to both computers as i was backing up stuff. One night I shut the iMac down and the next day it started with this problem.
Well... any educated suggestions would be most welcome,
thanks.
By the way, the memory in the mac was purchsed from a third party and installed ages ago by myself. Never been a problem with it and have been running Final Cut Studio no trouble.
iMac G5 2GHz Mac OS X (10.4.7) RAM 2GB

Long story short, I had the same problem last week, just after installing the latest software updates. I went through all the resets and disk utility verification (multiple times with phone support -- Apple Care), then took it to the local Apple store b/c nothing worked. They couldn't figure it out either and recommended that I try to backup my data on my bootable external drive before they started messing with my hard drive, since Apple stopped providing this service. I brought it home, could not boot from my external drive, so booted from the disk again, just for kicks I ran the same verification process (this was the 3rd or 4th time). This time something happened but it still failed. So I ran it three more times (each time something new happened and then it failed, until the third time when everything worked. The only problem now is that I seem to have lost all sound???? I did immediately make a duplicate of the Imac hard drive. Any thoughts on how to get my sound back? hope this helps....
Imac G5 20" Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Imac Not Booting From CD

I've tried just about everything at this stage, so I'm here asking for help. I have an Imac, of which I can log into the root account and has no openfirmware password. The Macos ISO is seen from within Macosx, though I cannot get it to boot from cd, whether holding down the "c" key or setting that device to boot up first from the startup disk menu. I have tried resetting the pram and nvram and reset-all within openfirmware, and the "boot-device" command within openfirmware shows exactly the same as another machine which does boot from cd. I know that both the drive and (multiple) CD's I've tried are functional.
Can anyone point me in the right direction as I am at a loss at the moment and have no further idea's of my own.

n0der,Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Is the Optical drive known good? can you read other disks?
If not do you have another Mac you could use Target Disk Mode on and hence use that Mac's optical drive rather than the iMac's internal...
Does Apple Hardware Test CD report any faults or will it not boot from that either?
mrtotes

27" iMac not booting after start up. HELP!

After being turned off for 8 hours, iMac won't boot up fully. After being stuck on white screen with apple logo and spinning loading icon for 20 mins, I held the power buttom down but still nothing.
Can anyone suggest steps to take?
Cheers
Sam

Hi Sam,
I agree with baltwo, If your Macintosh is behaving erratically or is not booting up all the way, you may want to try resetting the PRAM as per below;
1) Shut down the computer.
2) Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
3) Turn on the computer.
4) Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the grey screen appears.
5) Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
6) Release the keys.
This resets the PRAM
PRAM is a type of memory found in Macintosh computers that stores system settings. These settings include display settings (like screen resolution and color depth), the time zone setting, speaker volume, and the startup volume choice. The system settings that are stored in the computer's PRAM differ from Mac to Mac, but the purpose of the memory remains the same.

Imac not booting, Able to get to disk ulility with snow leopard disk. Tap on had disk, not given choice to do anything. Information list that smart is certified and partition map is us formatted. How do I get mac to start up again?

Imac not starting up, keep getting white screen. Using snow leopard. Able to get to disk utilities with snow leopard installation disk. Tap on had disk, not given choice to certified disk or anything else. Information on disk states that smart status is certified. Partition map I formatted. Also tried to restore from back up, but get error: not enough disk space. Tried to erase disk, but unable. What do I do next to get mac to start up?

Thank you. That's what I thought will need to happen.
One more question. I tried using the Apple install disk that came with the computer. It's an OS 10.5.6 disk. It does not see my 10.6.8 system internal hard drive to repair. All it see's is itself 10.5.6 disk. Do you think I can use a 10.8+ disk utillity since that is a higher system it will see the 10.6.8. Where the 10.5.6 does not?
I don't want to turn the computer off for fear I'll get the question mark again. P-Ram got me going last time but for how long I don't know? It would be nice to be able to turn the computer off for the night and startup as usual to give it a rest and try to reset itself.
Thanks for your help, I know I will eventually need to re-install. But I am in the middle of a project with tight deadlines and all I can do right now is back-up. Trying to migrate to another computer temporarily to finish the job. That's a lot of extra work in the short time also.
Just trying to put a band-aid on it for another couple weeks.

Early 08 iMac not booting - You Need to Restart Message

So after lunch today, I touched the shift key to wake up my iMac from sleeping. Screen came up, but it was totally frozen with distorted green digital "crud" in various places in the display. (no other way I know to describe the green stuff, it wasn't consistent lines or anything...just random distortion).
I powered down to restart, and the following message came up http://gallery.me.com/daveoli#100064 advising me I had to restart again. Did so, and same message. Tried the following methods, all resulting in the same message coming up:
Unplugged completed, waited an hour (in case of overheating) and powered-up.
Booted holding D key for h/w test - no test just got same message.
Booted in safe mode.
Booted from CD.
I called apple support, and the tech advised me to boot holding down cmd-option-r and then p to reset pram. 3 bongs, and then release....this worked! The mac booted up. First thing I did was connect firewire drive and make a back up. Ran a disk check with disk util and everything was ok. I then started to download the hw util from the mac site...and wham, screen froze again with the green crud.
This time, restarting with the resetting the pram did not work. Nothing gets me to progress beyond that "need to restart" screen. I will call Apple again in the morning...but in the mean time, any one here have any ideas or have seen this issue before?

That's a *kernel panic.*
They are usually caused by hardware problems, but can be software.
Disconnect all peripherals, except keyboard and mouse. Reconnect one at a time to see if you can find the culprit.
If that's no help, run the Apple Hardware Test, from the separate disc that came with your Mac.
more kernel panic info:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1392
http://www.index-site.com/kernelpanic.html
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/kernelpanics.html

HT201295 iMac not booting

My iMac froze and now won't boot - gets to a white screen with grey apple abd progress wheel hangs then eventually turns itself off

Take each of these steps that you haven't already tried. Stop when the problem is resolved.
To restart an unresponsive computer, press and hold the power button for a few seconds until the power shuts off, then release, wait a few more seconds, and press it again briefly.
Step 1
The first step in dealing with a startup failure is to secure the 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 the last backup, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is unable to start. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
a. Start up from 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.” The article refers to starting up from a DVD, but the procedure in Recovery mode is the same. You don't need a DVD if you're running OS X 10.7 or later.
b. If Step 1a fails because of disk errors, and no other Mac is available, then you may be able to salvage some of your files by copying them in the Finder. If you already have an external drive with OS X installed, start up from it. Otherwise, if you have Internet access, follow the instructions on this page to prepare the external drive and install OS X on it. You'll use the Recovery installer, rather than downloading it from the App Store.
c. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, start 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.
d. 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
If the startup process stops at a blank gray screen with no Apple logo or spinning "daisy wheel," then the startup volume may be full. If you had previously seen warnings of low disk space, this is almost certainly the case. You might be able to start up in safe mode even though you can't start up normally. Otherwise, start up from an external drive, or else use the technique in Step 1b, 1c, or 1d to mount the internal drive and delete some files. According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation.
Step 3
Sometimes a startup failure can be resolved by resetting the NVRAM.
Step 4
If a desktop Mac hangs at a plain gray screen with a movable cursor, the keyboard may not be recognized. Press and hold the button on the side of an Apple wireless keyboard to make it discoverable. If need be, replace or recharge the batteries. If you're using a USB keyboard connected to a hub, connect it to a built-in port.
Step 5
If there's a built-in optical drive, a disc may be stuck in it. Follow these instructions to eject it.
Step 6
Press and hold the power button until the power shuts off. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed to start up, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Use a different keyboard and/or mouse, if those devices are wired. If you can start up 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.
Step 7
If you've started from an external storage device, make sure that the internal startup volume is selected in the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences.
Start up in safe mode. Note: If FileVault is enabled in OS X 10.9 or earlier, or if a firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Post for further instructions.
Safe mode is much slower to start 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 the login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
When you start up 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, the startup volume is corrupt and the drive is probably malfunctioning. In that case, go to Step 11. If you ever have another problem with the drive, replace it immediately.
If you can start and log in in safe mode, empty the Trash, and then open the Finder Info window on the startup 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 restart as usual (i.e., not in safe mode.)
If the startup process hangs again, the problem is likely caused by a third-party system modification that you installed. Post for further instructions.
Step 8
Launch Disk Utility in Recovery mode (see Step 1.) Select the 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 restart as usual.
Step 9
If the startup device is an aftermarket SSD, it may need a firmware update and/or a forced "garbage collection." Instructions for doing this with a Crucial-branded SSD were posted here. Some of those instructions may apply to other brands of SSD, but you should check with the vendor's tech support.
Step 10
Reinstall the OS. If the Mac was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade.
Step 11
Do as in Step 9, but this time erase the startup volume in Disk Utility before installing. The system should automatically restart into the Setup Assistant. Follow the prompts to transfer the data from a Time Machine or other backup.
Step 12
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 startup 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 13
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.

IMac not booting after putting HDD in windows machine

Hi, I'm helping a friend repair an iMac G5 ALS (before the iSight ones)
The main problem is that it keeps switching itself off, or just not turning on at all, but i have ordered a new power supply to fix that.
The other problem is that, before I did anything to the mac, I put the hard drive in to my Windows Vista machine to back up important files. But the drive didnt appear in My Computer. So, I right-clicked on My Computer, went to Manage and then the Disk Management service. From here I right-clicked on the Mac drive that had appeared on this menu and then clicked 'Initialize' (I had done this before on a Windows HDD so it seamed like the logical thing to do) but nothing happened. (I now know that it wasn't recognized by Windows because of the different filesystem on macs)
I put the HDD back in the mac and waited for it to start playing ball. Eventually it decided to turn on, but instead of booting, it came up with the flashing question mark folder. I put the Leopard disk I have into the machine and it booted to the Leopard installer.
Using the disk utility I found that the hard drive was there so I verified and repaired it and rebooted but still just the flashing question mark folder comes up.
I'm fairly certain that it was the 'Initializing' that caused all the boot problems.
Any ideas anyone? Cheers in advance.

Welcome to Discussions - you will have to reinitialize the hard drive as Mac OS Extended (journaled) before it can be recognized by the machine. Boot from the Leopard disc and after you have selected English as your language, go to Tools (or whatever it is called, I don't have it in front of me)in the menu bar and select Disk Utility and reformat the drive.

My iMac not boot

Hola, mi iMac murió, no arranca. Instalé bootcamp para utilizar software de windows en mi iMac, pero al iniciar el proceso mi computadora se reinicio, tardó un rato en una pantalla gris y después apareció una pantalla negra la cual decía: "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" y de esa pantalla no pasa. Ya no tengo acceso a mi computadora ni a mis archivos. Estoy desesperado, tengo archivos muy importantes ahi. Que puedo hacer? Me urge trabajar en mi iMac!!

I think I found a solution. But perform these steps at your own risk. And thanks again to J.C above!
First download the latest beta version of Onyx for Mac. Verify your disk, SMART status, etc. Then go to the cleaning tab and check off everything. Clean out all the caches. Now you can use Onyx or Disk Utility to verify and repair permissions.
If you have and iMac, you should reset the SMC by shutting it down, then disconnecting the Power Cable. It also doesn't hurt to hold the Power button down for 15 seconds. Then wait a minute, reconnect the power cord. Then reset the PRAM. For my Mac, I had to switch on my keyboard, turn on the Mac, then quickly hold Command, Option, P and R while booting. Hold them down until you hear the Apple sound twice.
After that, my Mac booted like lightning. Everything is fast and my fans are working properly. The OS is no longer glitchy and Wonky, but still had a startup issue.
Now for all you iMac users out there who get stuck booting into safe mode (which is my startup issue it seems), where airport (wifi) doesn't work and the graphics are messed up. The solution is kinda weird. Make sure when you boot your Mac, the keyboard and mouse are turned off, or any other BT device. Then the system will boot normally and quickly.
I don't like the solution for the safe boot, so I hope Apple comes up with a bluetooth or bootloader fix soon. As for all the Macbook Pros out there, I suggest like some others about resetting the PRAM and SMC may help you out, but bluetooth would not be the cause for your booting into safe mode with no wifi. You just have to reboot a few times and cross your fingers or go back to Snow Leopard until 10.7.1 comes around.
Hope this helps everybody!

2011 imac not booting after os x yosemite installed...just beeps with black screen

installed Yosemite and now my iMac will not start
no problems before...
signed in today after iMac booted...
then went to black screen and beeps
cannot get past...beeps with black screen

Hey FloydC,
Thanks for the question. I understand you are experiencing issues with your iMac. The following resource may help to resolve your issues:
Troubleshooting: My computer won't turn on
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1367?viewlocale=en_US
Mac computers: About startup tones
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5860
Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2570
Thanks,
Matt M.

2011 21.5" iMac not booting past Apple logo

A friend of mine has had a 21.5" iMac since last fall. It's a 2011 model, which came with Snow Leopard preinstalled; however, as he was eligible for the free upgrade to Lion, I took care of that from him (basically, he's been running 10.7 since day one). It's been working well ever since, and I successfully managed to install Mountain Lion on the machine just a few weeks ago.
Just a few hours ago, Mail started acting up on his machine and I tried to help him. The symptoms, if they're at all relevant, were that a new message composition window wouldn't close if he clicked the "close window" button, and the send button was greyed out. I recommended a restart.
Here's where things got really interesting. The computer froze on the Apple logo. That is to say, initially, after the startup chime, the Apple logo showed up with a spinner; after three or four minutes (already abnormally long), the spinner vanished, but the Apple logo stayed. We left it like that for about a half hour, to no effect. I restarted a few times using the I/O button on the back of the machine, trying to eject any CDs using the "click on restart" trick, holding down the shift key to get into safe mode (with limited success: a loading bar appeared, then nothing happened for 20 minutes, at which point I restarted again) and to zap the PRAM, to no effect. I can't hear the hard drive's head clicking back and forth, as it usually does in my iMac, and tried booting from the recovery CD. Strangely enough, the CD drive spins up, then back down almost immediately, and we're back to square one, with an Apple logo in the middle of the screen.
At this point I'm completely puzzled; I've browed fora and message boards, and so far, nothing I've tried seems to work. My friend is reluctant to go to the Apple store, as he thinks that he'll lose all of his data that way (even though he's got a backup disk set up, with backups from just before the restart, going back about a month). Fact is, I'm not sure that there is a solution at this point, beyond taking the machine, which is still under warranty, to an Apple store.
What would be a good course of action at this point?

I tried starting up in safe mode. The loading bar showed up, filled up, and disappeared, and then, nothing. Just the Apple logo, for at least 20 minutes (I later restarted and tried zapping the PRAM, also without success).

IMac Not Booting - Probable Hard Drive Failure

Hello, my 24" iMac (Early 2008) has stopped booting up, and I've been suspecting HDD failure. When it boots, it gets to the white screen, I get some weird noise from the drive, and then a floppy disk with a question mark appears.
I inserted and booted from the Mac OS X install disk, and the only instance where it even recognizes the existence of a hard drive is when it is indicated as "Media" and is described having a capacity of zero bytes.
I'm just trying to confirm that the problem is the hard drive, and see if I did the right thing by buying a new Hard Drive. The disk doesn't show up in disk utility or when I choose to restore from a time machine backup (luckily, I lost no data with my Time Machine backups).
I appreciate any advice you can give (including tips on the hard drive replacement procedure).

If you ran Disk Utility from the install disc that came with the computer and it cannot see the HD then it appears it's the internal HD. You can also run AHT, here are the instructions:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1883
I believe AHT will let you know the HD has failed. As far as instructions for replacing the HD it's not for the faint of heart, if you are comfortable working on notebook computers then you could probably do it. Remember internally an iMac is more like a notebook than a PC. If you are not comfortable doing this type of surgery (BTW there are many videos on how you can find using Google) then it should only be about a $200-300 repair from a AASP.
Regards,
Roger

IMac not booting properly

Hello all. I have an Intel-based iMac which runs fine when it boots up, yet the way my MAC boots seems weird. When I turn on my MAC it comes up with a white screen; the white screen will hold firm for about a minute then a globe will appear. The globe appears light and will blink and get darker. This will happen for about 3 minutes then the apple will appear and the sign screen will appear. Is there any fix for this?

Hi Nique7411
Go to: *Apple > System Preferences > Startup Disk* select the *Mac OS X 10.6.4 on Macintosh HD* icon *Click on the lock to prevent further changes* and then click the Restart button.
Then if that doesn't fix it, check: *Apple > System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items* and report back with your list of items in *These items that will open automatically when you log in*.
Dennis

Imac not booting.

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