IMac won't boot after Lion install

I have an Intel iMac circa 2007/2008. I just installed OSX Lion on it. After installation, the computer would beachball frequently and eventually froze completely. I had to do a hard-reset as the system was completely unresponsive.
Now the computer won't boot up. It gets stuck at the grey screen with an Apple and a spinner at the bottom.
Please help; this computer runs my small business.

How much RAM is installed? Lion will run much better with at least 4 GBs of installed RAM.
I would guess you updated from Snow Leopard and that Snow Leopard was not in good shape. Reinstall Lion to see if this fixes things for you:
Reinstalling Lion
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. Alterhatively, 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.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

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IMac 8,1 won't boot after Lion Install.

Hey guys,
I have an iMac8,1 with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo that I just installed Lion on.
It previously had Leopard on it, but after shutting it down to boot from the USB stick that I had made on my MacBook, I pressed alt to show the device selection menu. There were no options except EFI boot with an orange drive, which I took for the Lion stick that I had made. Installing Lion went without a hitch. I formatted the drive that Leopard was on and did a clean install. After it was finished, I set up Lion and set up a Boot Camp partition so that I could install Windows 7 side by side with it. I booted into the device selection menu (holding down alt/option while booting) and it showed me a completely blank screen. No Macintosh HD, no EFI boot, no Windows DVD, nothing.
I put the flash drive back into the machine, and kept restarting it and seeing the same result, until all of a sudden it decided to finally start, and I saw the Apple logo. After a while, though, it became apparent that it was not booting into OS X Lion on the hard drive, but rather the Lion Install.
I have no idea what to do with this machine. It was running extremely slowly before I started trying to fix it, and it didn't make sense to me that a machine with fairly capable specs (I have the same processor and 2GB of RAM on my MacBook and it runs great) would run so catastrophically slowly.
Also, I'm now in Disk Utility running from the Lion USB and it a) sees both partitions and mounts them fine, b) says that "The volume "Macintosh HD" appears to be OK", after Repair Disk c) is unable to fix or verify disk permissions.
I'm at a loss as to what to do. Can anyone help?

If you have backups of all OS X and WIndows data on the internal drive, I suggest you partition it with the default options (GUID partition table, one data partition) while booted from the USB device. Install OS X and test. If you can boot in that configuration, restore your OS X data and then run Boot Camp Assistant, if you wish.
If the above procedure is unsuccessful, the machine has a hardware fault.

Mac pro 2006 won't boot after lion install

hi,
under 10.6.8 everything worked fine. All adapters and peripherals were functional.
After a normal looking lion install my mac pro 2006 will not make it past the boot screen (Grey Apple logo with spinning wheel). After a while the spinning wheel stopped spinning but I hear disk I/O continue for some time. A verbose boot lists the usual output. The last line visible has a mention of macos_swapon or something like that. I do note the first couple of lines specify a 64 bit kernel is booting. I was under the impression that this machine cannot run the 64 bit kernel from snow leopard discussions.
The video card is an upgraded one (i.e. not the stock card that came with the machine). However as I said before it was working fine under snow leopard.
Any ideas?

I have the same problem. I did a clean install of Lion and created a temp account. I was able to use Lion for a bit, then I used the Migration Assistant to bring my regular accounts back in from an external drive. When that completed I logged off of the temp account and into my main account (without restarting). Still no problems, Lion was working fine. I shut the Macbook down for the night. Now that I'm powering it on the next morning, I only get the Apple logo and spinning wheel.
I tried a PRAM zap, but it didn't help.

IMac won't boot after power outage

I got a power outage a couple of hours ago. And now my iMac won't boot. When I power it up, it gets pass the white screen with the apple logo. The screen than turns blue with a spinning cursor. The cursor spins for about 10-15 minutes and stops but the normal login screen never appear and it won't boot into the desktop either. I just got a blue screen.
I have boot into the install Disc1 and did the disk repair and premission repair but it didn't help.
Any idea?
Sidney

Oh man, what a disaster!
I tried to do an Archive and Install but the installation hanged at the end of disc 2 after running an iWeb script (according to the install log) with about one minute left. I have waited for two hours but it just hanged there with all the drives spin down.
To make the problem worse. There was no way to quit the install at that point because all the menu items were disabled. The only way out was to power off. But when I powered it back on, it booted right into install directly asking for the disc 2. If I put the disc in it will install again and hang at the same spot.
Disc 2 contains iLife. I know Apple wanted to make things simple but why can't they give me an option to skip it? After all, iLife was already installed.
I finally got it working by booting from disc 1 and did a clean install. It took me all night to re-download all the updates and reinstall many applications. Fortunately, I have my address book, calendar, and most of my works backed up to .Mac so it wasn't a total lost.
On the bright side. Now my iMac is working better than before. I used to have problem getting auto sleep to work but now it works perfectly. Safari also had problem accessing charts (but Camino was fine) in a few web sites like schwab.com. Now everything works.
Lenn and David. Thanks for all your helps.
Now I am looking for a better backup solution so that the recovery won't be this painful if disaster strikes again. Any suggestions?
Sidney

IMac won't boot after trying to migrate files to macbook?

While trying to migrate info from my IMAC to my Macbookpro all work froze on both puters. Macbook starts and runs alright. But my IMAC won't boot at all. Tried startup disc and it won't get past picking a destination because it doesn't list one. I made a boo boo hear and need help fixing this.

Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install OS X.

IMac won't boot after power failure during 10.5.6 update

Help!
Tried to update last night and at something like 80% install, we had a power cut. iMac won't boot at all now - get to a grey screen which tells me to restart. Don't have a wired keyboard. If I did - what are the steps to get this working again.
I believe I have a good backup, but don't want to risk as all the family photos are on the iMac.
Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the help, but can't even get to a screen where I could type anything! I know I'm being dumb here.

Leopard DVD won't boot after bad install

I ran the leopard installation yesterday and I realized that i needed to do some more work on the drive before i installed, so i clicke cancel and restarted the computer. Now the dvd won't boot. I installed tiger again(came with laptop) and tried doing various other things with the disk. Almost any ntensive use of the disk (booting from it, trying to clone it, etc.) will result in the superdrive powering up and then down repeatedly, sans result. I left the leopard dvd to boot for hours and when it tries it gets to the grey logo and the drive does that power up/down cycle endlessly. I can boot from ubuntu's disk and the tiger disk that came with my computer. The disk mounts to the desktop, btw, and i can browse the files and everything. Apple support was no help.

I've been doing some work with the disk. I did another attempt at creating a dmg from it and got the same result, so I googled the error which led me to a thread on this site with a similar issue. The error was input/output error. They found that it was due to a corrupt file... so I did a cp -r of the disk and it said that a few files did not exist:
cp -r "Mac OS X Install DVD" /Users/mattebooks/Desktop/Leopard
cp: Mac OS X Install DVD/usr/lib/libpython.dylib: No such file or directory
cp: Mac OS X Install DVD/usr/lib/libpython2.5.dylib: No such file or directory
cp: Mac OS X Install DVD/usr/lib/libpython2.dylib: No such file or directory
cp: Mac OS X Install DVD/usr/lib/libruby.1.dylib: No such file or directory
cp: Mac OS X Install DVD/usr/lib/libruby.dylib: No such file or directory
cp: Mac OS X Install DVD/usr/lib/libtcl.dylib: No such file or directory
cp: Mac OS X Install DVD/usr/lib/libtcl8.4.dylib: No such file or directory
cp: Mac OS X Install DVD/usr/lib/libtk.dylib: No such file or directory
cp: Mac OS X Install DVD/usr/lib/libtk8.4.dylib: No such file or directory
So I set Finder to show hidden files and went to these files libpython and libpython2.5 are aliases of libpython2 and libpython2 is an alias of a file in a non-existing folder. A little more digging and I find out that the python, ruby, tcl and tk framework folders are all missing, all from the same folder... interesting. Maybe I could add the files in and reburn the disk. My guess is that the loader looks for these files repeatedly. The path to the files is /System/Library/Frameworks/... If anyone could email these to me I could try and rebuild the disk...

IMac won't boot after replacing hard drive and restoring from Time Machine

I was having problems with my iMac but upgraded to Lion when it came out. Had a few good days and then my hard drive died.
I had the drive replaced and the repair people put Snow Leopard on the new drive.
I then tried to restore everything from my Time Machine backup. At first when I tried to log on the computer wouldn't accept my password (i know it was right).
I decided to reinstall again using the snow leopard dvd i had. This time, the computer booted up (didn't ask me for a passord) and looked like it was in the process of setting things up. But Mail kept saying it was going to import messages but then quit and restarted a few seconds later. When i quit it it just came back again and again. I could see Chrome open behind it with my bookmarks in the toolbar and see other restored things, but the overall look was grey and not everything was there.
When i restarted from the HD and not the dvd i could never get past various shades of grey and the circling progress indicator. Never booted up at all.
I read about Lion having some restore hd functionality but it doesn't show up when i restart with option key. Am I in limbo between operating systems?
Any advice as to steps to take? I don't know much about this stuff.
Thanks for any help.

Yes, if you picked a Snow Leopard backup, that's what you got.
You could pick a Lion backup, and it would restore it, but that wouldn't create the Recovery HD, which you will need, sooner or later. See Using the Recovery HD. You'll need to re-download Lion for that to be created.
When you do that, after downloading but before installing Lion again, you might want to do this: Making a Lion Install disc or partition. Then if you need to reinstall Lion again, you can do it from that, instead of having to download it again.

Imac won't boot after update

hi guys i am new to macs I bought this for my daughter and tried to update.The update said to hold the program button and push power,well now she won't boot up just a grey sreen and what looks like a file with a blinking question mark and a face..
I have a imac g3 400mhz with 256mb ram
osx and 9.2 i belive any help appreciated

The flashing folder icon is your iMac's way of saying, "where is my OS? I can't find an OS!" If this appears briefly and goes away, it's usually because the PRAM was reset recently. The 4.1.9 firmware does reset your PRAM in the process--but only if successful in its task. To fix this temporary hiccup, open the Startup Disk control panel and select the hard drive, then click Restart.
If this icon continues to flash, there are some steps you can try.
1. Reset the PRAM via Command (Apple)Option+PR at startup. Hold the keys down until the Mac chimes thrice. If your Mac starts normally after the third chime, end here.
2. Reinitialize the firmware. Enter Open Firmware mode (CommandOption+OF) and issue the following, pressing Return after each command:
reset-nvram
set-defaults
reset-all
If successful, the Mac should reboot itself. Stop here if this solves the problem.
3. If you have the iMac restore disc, or a disc with OS 9.1-9.2.1, boot it and run Disk First Aid from the Utilities folder to repair file structure errors. If you have DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro Classic, you will be able to do more thorough repairs.
4. If all of the above fail, you can reinstall OS 9 if you still need to do the firmware upgrades, but you should reinitialize the hard drive with Drive Setup if you also want a clean install. Drive Setup can be found in the CD's Utilities folder.
Nate

IMac won't boot after iTunes Match - Get diskos2 i/o error. Help!

So after almost 24 straigth hours up uploading songs to iTunes Match, I woke up this morning and my iMac wouldn't boot. Gets stuck on the gray screen with the apple logo. I booted in verbose mode keep getting a "diskos2 i/o error." With a little googling some people say it's a bad sector and to erase and reinstall Lion others say it's a failing hard drive. Disk Utlity in Recovery Mode says the drive is ok. Any thoughts out there on what I should do? Thanks!

I am having the same problem. The machine loads just to the point when it says "Loading Mac OSX", then its non responsive for hours. The keyboard and mouse still work, but it won't move past that point.
When I try to repair the disk, it gives me an error message indicating that the disk cannot be repaired. I am bad at backing up my files, so I want to avoid a fresh reinstallation.
The worst part is I had just purchased Disk Warrior, and that won't boot up.
If no solutions are found, does anyone know a way that to initiate the computer in disk mode, so I can hook up another Mac to it, and save all the files?
-alfredo

OS X won't boot after being installed on an encrypted partition

Hello!
Today i formatted my entire disk, but made it Journaled, Encrypted. It installed (actually "downloaded aditional files"), and then booted with a cross/do not proceed sign. I booted from the install disk again, got an error telling me to reinstall OS X. I was never asked for my password, and when i started disk utility, the disk was locked.
Why is the option there if it doesn't work?
Andrei

Thanks for this info:
Kappy wrote:
There may be many reasons why it didn't work but without knowing exactly what you did it's pretty difficult to make any presumptions.
Others use it, and there have not been too many posts about using encrypted disks and FileVault 2. But searching the forums may help you.
One thing I'd consider trying if you were willing to take the time and trouble:
Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Step 1 can be changed to whatever method you are using to boot into the Lion installer or a Recovery HD volume.
But as ai said, i don't need it. I'm aleadry installing it normally.
So no need to help. I'm just curious why the Encrypted option isn't working.
Thia is what i did:
Booted from the disk, selected my HDD, clicked erase and selected "HFS+ extended (Journaled, Encrypted)"
It installed
After rebooting, it didn't ask me for the password i set for encryption.
Booted with the Cross (X) instead of the logo.
And that's it... I've seen that if you turn on filevault, it'll ask you for a password when booting. But for me it didn't.
RIght now it's working (i used the :HFS+ Extended (journaled)" without encryption.
And i want to know if it's my fault, or Apple's.

Early 2008 MacBook Pro won't boot after Lion 10.7.1 update

My 2.4 GHz 4GB RAM Early 2008 MacBook Pro wont boot after downloaded the Lion 10.7.1 upate. Upon restarting the screen went dead and now the system does not boot, as if the bootloader has been wiped out. Screen appears dead but was known to be working before hand. The hard drive spins up but doesn't sound like it is searching for data.
Can anyone help me?

Okay, I tried everything I can think of last night. I removed every startup process and every tool or programm that goes deeper into the system (GlimmerBlocker, LittleSnitch, Parallels). Cleaned Up every Cache I could find and refreshed every necessary Cache or Database possible. Took me a couple of hours. But still no luck - the machine doesn't boot, just in safe mode. Right now I copy all my personal stuff to a new external harddrive because TimeMachine doesn't work, after this I will do a clean install of Lion.
It's not hardware related, it's the 10.7.1 update that doesn't work properly. By the way, the only errors remaining are:
WindowServer - kCGErrorFailure
ManagedClient - kCGErrorFailure: CGSPackageGetWorkspaceType: couldn't get workspace type
SecurityAgent - kCGErrorFailure: CGSPackageGetWorkspaceType: couldn't get workspace type
and a lot of:
com.Apple.SecurityAgent.00000000-0000-0000-0000-0000000186A7: CoreAnimation: rendering error 506
that's also the last one I get before the system hangs…

Mac won't boot after leopard install

hi - installed leopard on my imac but now my mac won't boot:
i have already tried the following:
1) safe mode - but won't boot
2) single user mode - ran fsck - said no issues
3) did target mode with firewire cbale to my macbook and ran disk utility - no repairs needed - and i can see all my files on original computer
4) reinstalled leopard from holding down options key - leopard installed again
but for all of abv - when i reboot i still get white apple logo screen and the spinning wheel...
any other way to get into safe mode - as that is only thing i have not been able to start....
thanks!
susan

tigerswim, welcome to Apple Discussions.
Did you already have Tiger installed or did you have Panther 10.3 installed? Tiger is not a free upgrade; you have to buy it & then update (for free) using the download updates from Apple. Also, you have to use a universal/retail install DVD (or CDs) to install Tiger. You cannot use the install DVD from another model Mac.

IMac won't boot after ram upgrade

For some reason, my iMac late 2013 3.4Ghz quad core i5 won't boot with new ram modules added. New ram is exact same specs as original that came with the iMac. I've tested the new ones on their own in the iMac, and the system boots up fine. Same goes with just using the original ram. But when I put all 4 together, the iMac doesn't boot up. Not even the chime.
Combinations I've tried are:
1-Old
2-New
3-Old
4-New
No boot
1-New
2-Old
3-New
4-Old
No boot
1-New
2-Old
3-New
4-empty
No boot
1-Old
2-New
3-Old
4-empty
No boot
1-New
2-Old
3-Old
4-New
No boot
1-Old
2-New
3-New
4-Old
No boot
The only combinations that work are:
1-New
2-empty
3-New
4-empty
Boot good
1-Old
2-empty
3-Old
4-empty
Boot good
I just got off the phone with Apple, and they are saying all modules have to be the same size. ie. all 4GB or all 8GB. Can't mix and match sizes. Which is strange, because I've never heard of this. My Mac Pro has different speed ram modules, with different sizes in it. As long as I install ram in pairs, it runs like a charm. I've even heard the new iMacs don't have to have ram installed in pairs.
I'm wondering if slot 2 and 4 are maybe damaged? I haven't tried using just slot 2 and 4. To my understanding, you have to use 1 and 3 first. Can anyone confirm this?
Also, I've read a couple of people had to wait 30 seconds for the chime when they installed new ram in their iMacs. I didn't wait 30 sec to see if it would boot. Never heard of any Mac taking 30 sec to just chime in. lol Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a fix? Tx.

CLICKY CLICK---> iMac: How to remove or install memory
Or
Apple>About This Mac>More Info>Memory: Double click "Memory Install Instructions" at the bottom right of window.
my iMac late 2013 3.4Ghz quad core i5
Conflicting info. Your system profile shows: Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8). Please update/correct.

Imac won't boot after 10.6.8 update

Not sure where to start with this...
Just tried to boot after the latest 10.6.8 update and have the grey screen with the spinning disk.

I would suggest that you do the following as a start:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
If the drive is OK then download the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo installer and reinstall the update. See if that resolves your problem.
If the above does not fix the problem then you will need to reinstall Snow Leopard:
Reinstall OS X without erasing the drive
Do the following:
1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
Download and install the Combo Updater for the version you prefer from support.apple.com/downloads/.

IMac won't boot after Lion install

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