IMac won't boot after updates,have to reinstall loin from recovery drive

I have a 27" iMac running 10.7.1 and love it, but every time I do a software update it won't boot, it just goes to white screen with spinning gear forever! I let it set there for an hour and it never changed. I've tried restarting it but it just stops at that point,so I have to restart holding cmd-r to go to the recovery partition and have it reinstall loin,i've tried reparing the drive and perrmissions but it still wont boot unless i reinstall loin. I have five other macs running loin with no problem, so why just my imac?

Hopefully you have AppleCare. If so, call Apple to see if this if you are afflicted with the dreaded motherboard problem.
BTW, this area is for discussing iMac G4s. Since you have an iMac G5 you will probably want to make future posts in the iMac G5 discussion area.

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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

Mac won't boot after updating to OSX 10.6.4

I am on my 3rd Mac that won't boot after updating to OSX 10.6.4. One MacBook Pro and two iMacs. I fixed one but the last two are getting the better of me. HD is not fried. Have tried every keyboard shortcut on startup, Disk Warrior via. Target Disk, repairing permissions in single user mode. The machines will not boot off of a CD or DVD and it will not boot up in safe mode. Something in the startup files is preventing startup. I am suspecting Sophos antivirus. I tried to uninstall it and trash it but I think it's still blocking something. Any help would be appreciated.

Got it! Not sure if removing Sophos had anything to do with it but here's what I did.
1) boot dead machine in Target Disk Mode (iMac)
2) boot good machine off Snow Leopard disk (MacBook)
3) install OS to dead machine- I found this next part very curious. When the install was complete the MacBook restarted as the iMac.
4) ran software updates
5) shut down MacBook then shut down iMac
6) rebooted iMac- all was good
I actually did this twice because a co-worker had the exact same problem on her MacBook Pro. Got both fixed today.
Thanks everyone for your help!

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.

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

Mac Mini won't boot after update

I have a Mac Mini that won't boot after the most recent software update. Since the Mini has only a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, a number of the usual options (hold down shift, etc.) won't work. I've tried a reset, also no luck. At the moment, I can't locate my Tiger install CD either.
When holding the power button on during boot, I get a series of flashes from the status light on the front (a set of very rapid flashes, followed by a slower set, followed by a slow set) but no startup chime, or fan, or video. My display and power source are both known-good (work fine with my Powerbook)
Any suggestions, other than buying a hardwired keyboard/mouse?

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
The 'newer version of OS X" error occurs because the installer on the DVD you have booted to has by default been set to update the version of MacOS on the hard drive, which of course it can't do because the version of MacOS it is installing is newer. The only way to install in this situation is to select a different option. However, that isn't what you want to do at this point, because as it says, you'll loose your data if you do an 'erase and install'.
Instead, you should see menus at the top of the screen when it's booted to that install disk. Click the Utilities menu, select Disk Utility, and then click the top entry for the internal hard drive on the left. Once done, click on the 'Repair Disk' button (not Repair Permissions). This will test the drive to make sure it's OK. If it reports errors, and then reports 'error or exit' with the drive not repaired, you will either need a 3rd party application such as Alsoft's Disk Warrior, or to perform an erase and install (which of course you don't want to do at this point because your data is not backed up).
If the Repair Disk process completes with no errors, next select Repair Permissions, and let that process complete, then reboot the system as normal to see if you can now access the drive.

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 OSX Intel update crash - Newbie needs help please!

Hi,
at the weekend I updated OSX on my IMac 17 with an Intel update. An error message said that the update could not be installed and that the update was sent to the trash - a restart was requested. Since that shutdown my Mac chimes and gets stuck at the white load screen (hard drive is quiet).
I've tried the following:
Holding Shift key upon boot to initiate Safe Mode - No Joy!
Apple+S to run disk utlity/console - cannot initiate to cmd prompt!
Just as a little background - I'm a recent Apple convert and typical Windows defector. I've seen the light after many years in M**soft environments (I even trained to MCSE) but my Mac OS knowledge is considerably lacking. Let's be honest - so far I haven't had any problems.
Any gentle help would be most appreciated folks - I'm not sure where to start and I want my baby back!
Many thanks.

Same here. I have an iMac 20". It has been upgraded to Leopard and running fine since I purchased it 2 weeks ago. I downloaded the latest OS/X update (100+MB in size) but the installation failed. The system requested a reboot but it has not been able to ever since. It simply keeps beeping with a white screen. I put the Leopard DVD in, held the "C" key, but nothing works. Now I have a system that won't work. From now on, I will shy away from getting the latest update .... I am planning to take it to the apple store

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

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.

MacBook won't boot after updates

My girlfriend has a black 13" MacBook and we ran updates on it today and after it had installed all the updates and it went to reboot it now won't boot up. It turns on and you see the apple logo but then it comes up with a window saying that it needs to be restarted and in the background there is a few lines of "code." I am a PC user so I am doing my best to help her resolve this problem. I do love my iPhone and iTunes so don't hate me too much haha. I did some research on here and read how to boot up in safe mode and I tried to do this but it didn't work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

She bought the computer used so unfortunately she does not have the start up disk. She also has not backed up the information on the computer but we are more concerned about getting the computer to work because she cannot afford to buy a new one and she has barely had this one more than a year. The only thing that is connected to the computer is the power cord and the battery is shot so we cannot disconnect the power cord and use the computer. Well I read the instructions on starting up in safe mode so I hold the power button until I hear the obnoxious beep and then hold the shift key down until u see the little gear thing and apple logo. Well I get the apple logo but no gear and then I get the pop up window that I spoke of before telling
Me to restart and there is the lines of "code" in the back ground.

System won't boot after update

After installing the latest system update (from Leopard 10.5.1 to 10.5.2) on my Dual Processor PowerMac G5, I was able to restart then within 2 minutes a freeze. I couldn't force quit...had to power done.
Upon powering on, my screen hangs on the gray screen for about a minute (with the clockwise powering up status symbol), then it shuts down on its own. It won't boot into safe mode. In single user mode, it tells me there is a "disk0s2: I/O error" ... Is my hard drive dead? I've tried resetting the PRAM, resetting the PMU button, unplugging all 3rd party devices, but to no avail.
I'm hopeful I can recover files somehow. Where should I proceed? I'm not sure exactly how the internal drives work. Can I, for instance, unplug and remove the top internal drive and place the 2nd internal drive where the top one was and see if i can boot from that drive?? Thereby determining which drive has the issue? Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks so much!
Sean

Can you boot off the leopard DVD and run the disk utility disk verification on the drive? If it's a hardware problem then there's probably not much you can do. If you have a TM backup of your system then you should be ok, since you can replace the drive and then restore your system to it from the TM backup.

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.

My iMac does not boot after update!!!

I have just update my iMac (Intel) with Apple Software update. I have not updated for quite a while and obvious there were a bunch of stuff to update on my mac. However, when the computer requests a restart, my computer simply does not restart at all. I have tried to make it restart from the apple icon, and it still stay on. So I turn it off manually and the problem kicks in. My computer start with the grey apple icon screen and the little progress indicator, but it does not boot into OS X!!! It remains in a blue screen with the mouse pointer.
I restarted it again unplugging everying and nothing changed. Then I tried Disk Repair and it does not help neither. Then I tried to hold the power button while turning it on till I get the loud beep noise and flashy light. The problem stay the same. I do not want to erase my disk...
Someone Helps!
Intel iMac 20" Dual Core / MacBook Pro 15" Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Interesting. Have you installed any third-party RAM? Is there any possibility that your RAM became loose? Make sure your existing RAM is seated properly.
Have you performed a SMC reset?
Resetting the SMC can resolve some computer issues such as not starting up:
From the Apple menu, choose Shut Down (or if the computer is not responding, hold the power button until it turns off).
Unplug all cables from the computer, including the power cord and any display cables.
Wait at least 15 seconds.
Plug the power cord back in, making sure the power button is not being pressed at the time. Then reconnect your keyboard and mouse to the computer.
Press the power button on the back to start up your computer.
Are you able to boot in SAFE mode? If so, you can trouble shoot from there.
Be sure the computer is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, press and hold the Shift key.
Tip: The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone but not before.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple and progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).

Macbook pro won't boot after update to 10.6.8

Hi everyone,
Yesterday I bought an used macbook pro (15 inch early 2008). When looking at it, it was in good shape and the previous owner just did a fresh install of snow leopard. I took it home and whas happy with it. In the first two hours of using it, everything was fine. After installing the update to 10.6.8 my macbook needed to be shut down.. After shutting down it started up again but the screen stayed black. I had no idea why. So I rebooted it by pressing the power button. The same problem remained, it seemed to start up (I could hear the harddrive and fan) but it didn't boot into Mac Os. After a couple of attempts, it now shutsdown immediatly after pressing the powerbutton (3 seconds after). No chime or nothing.
At first I thought this would only be a software problem, because the problem started immediatly after updating. So I put in my snow leopard dvd to boot into that, but I can't even get it to boot into the install dvd. Because it shuts down immediatly after pressing the power button. Then I started suspecting an hardware failure, which would be a very big coincidence to show up immediatly after booting up. These are the things I have tried so far, to no avail:
- Plugging of the power cord and removing the battery, then pressing and holding the powerbutton for at least 5 sec
- Holding the option, command, P and R keys during boot.
- Replacing the memory
- Replacing the hard drive
- Unplugging the super drive
- Starting up holding the d key
At a certain point I was hoping that It would be an harddrive or memory problem. I replaced both with examples I know for sure they are working. But still the same problem; macbook shuts down almostimmedialty after pressing the power button.
There is no warrany anymore, and technical support would cost me 49 euros per incident.. to probably hear that the macbook is beyond repair. I feel i have just thrown away 300 euro's for an nightmare experience. Does anybody now anything to try, i'm really desperate here

After installing the update to 10.6.8
What update was that?
So I put in my snow leopard dvd to boot into that, but I can't even get it to boot into the install dvd.
Did the previous owner also give you the discs that originally came with the computer? Those are what you need to troubleshoot with. You also need disc 1 to run the Apple Hardware Test.
There is no warrany anymore, and technical support would cost me 49 euros per incident..
Apple Store and AASP diagnostic testings are free. Suggest that you take full advantage of it. This way you can find out exactly what is wrong with your computer. Post back here with the diagnosis and someone will post DIY repair sites.

IMac won't boot after updates,have to reinstall loin from recovery drive

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