Locked Gray Apple Screen

I just bought a refurbished Ipod. I was in the middle of the install process and my computer froze. I restarted and I am stuck on the gray apple think screen. I have tried re-installing from my OS-10.3 discs. I hold down the C key, but it still tries to boot from the hard drive and not the disc. I am stuck. What to do?
mdk

Hello! A couple of thoughts. It has to have the original apple keyboard to boot holding the "c" key down (at least mine does) and it takes a few minutes to boot from the cd so be patient. Also it has to be a retail set of Panther discs and not from some other machine. Tom

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What your describing could be a logic board or memory issue.
You did or did not hear 3 startup chimes? If you hear 3 chimes when you start it, that would indicate a memory problem. Try reseating the memory to see if that makes a difference. If you have 2 RAM cards, try one then the other in each slot. If you have 1 RAM card, move it to the other slot. Powerbooks can develop one bad slot.
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I've restarted twice and it freezes on the gray apple screen. No kernel panic message, no error message, nothing. No peripheral devices plugged in. No new RAM installed. It just decided to start doing this today.
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thanks.

Your directory is corrupted. It could be from a bad block on the hard drive, incorrect shutdown procedure, or even hardware issues (possible but not likely).
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I checked further and found this post on another web site:
DiskWarrior and invalid key length on Mac OS X hard drives
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This was happening to mine as well and I had to take it in a few times and they had to wipe it completely. If your computer is more that 5 years old, it may be that it is time for a new one. I suggest taking it in so they can diagnose it!

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Thank you so much for your reply. I am in the processing of doing the safe boot (I chose to see it) and there are a lot of codes on the screen and it was checking all different things. All of that checking seems to have stopped and all the words and codes on the screen are staying the same. How do I know if the process is done and how long does it take? I am not sure what to do right now.

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zydeco,
I am not sure if I can help, but here are a few suggestions...
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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=112433
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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50028
If neither of the two suggestions help, please post back.

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Hi Erik,
Every time I boot into OF, the very top message is "NVRAM Corrupted"
Just one thought fwiw: I'm wondering if you have a bad cache. I can't remember if you can access your Apple Menu>About This Mac>More Info while booted to your install disc, but if so, see if your L2 and L3 cache are listed. If that doesn't work, again I don't remember if this will work, but while booted to FWTDM open Applications>Utilities>System Profiler on your Ti HD and see if caches are listed. Which Ti (CPU) do you have btw?
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Won't go pass the gray apple screen

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The card is pushed as far as it will go into the
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Hi, I have a 1GHz eMac ATI and had a problem installing my Airport Extreme card as well. It would boot fine, but the card would not connect. It turned out that the card was not seated properly and maybe this is something for you to look at.
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It is not just a matter of pushing harder, you need to wiggle it slightly up and down and push firmly with 2 fingers, one on each side so that the force is evenly distributed. Mine needed just a smidgeon more force than what it took to slide the machine back - try it a little bit at a time. Put it up against a wall so it doesn't slide back, but don't apply excessive force. Part of the problem is that is hard to get your fingers in there to do the job.
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Dr. Smoke...Gray Apple Screen, Keeps Spinning...

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It started running the Test Disk, and the install failed, and said try installing again.
I read on the xlab to remove the items in the Library > startupItems folder - being that it seems the issue is during the startup sequence.
I dragged the contents to a folder on the desktop, and rebooted. The xlab said if it boots ok, add one startup item at a time and restart, working with process of elimination.
Well, now the machine stays on the gray screen with the Apple - and the spinning circle under it. (I let it try to startup for a few hours like this, no go.)
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Hi, maybe you can help me, since you seem to be very knowledgeable and experienced - like me. I have been a very proud and determined user of macs for about 18 years and never really had any issues with them until recently. I cleaned up my old G3 eMac and gave it to my kids about a year ago and a couple of moths ago I started getting the kernel panic and broken folder blinking icons, so I got Disk Warrior and hoped that would fix it. It didn't. I ran the hardware tests - everything was fine, got on live chat with the guy from Alsoft for three days, trying everythign we could to revive my poor eMac. Reluctantly I decided to erase the volume and re-install everything, which has been done, but now I can't get it to start off the new disk. It just sticks to the gray apple screen with the spinner just having a good time and I am miserable!! I refuse to believe that I am not going to get this one back - it's there, my information, files and pictures are gone, but the computer should be fine. What am I doing wrong?

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When I got home and fired it up, it opened right to my desktop like normal. I had to run an errand so I just put it on sleep. When I got back I clicked on System Preferences to change my desktop and I got the spinning beachball of death. I'd already put my Tiger DVD in the tray. I had to do a hard shut down once again. When I powered back up it showed my OS DVD so I refreshed my memory on selecting the "Install and Archive" process.
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A few months ago my cat peed on my computer and despite the battery no longer working the computer its self continued working fine after letting it sit a few days.
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I've tried to troubleshooting it numerous times but even after letting it safe boot all night I came to no avail.
All the suggestions I've gotten on other sites say I sould re-install the OSX server, the problem being I don't know how, or which OSX I have, they also say the memory will probably be erased, I can't have this happen because I have many things I wrote on there that I have no where else. I bought this laptop in the first few days of 2009.
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Hello,
Could someone help me, please? I apologize for the long message but I want to be as detailed as possible.
My MacBook (purchased early 2006, white 13", upgraded to Leopard about a year ago with no problems until now) will not boot past the grey screen and spinning wheel.
Here' are the list of 6 steps I've followed so far and still is not working. Oh, and I do not have any peripherals attached to my MacBook:
1. Reboot in Safe Mode: tried pressing down the Shift key before the powering up sound AND after the sound. Could not get into Safe Mode. Did this several times, holding the Shift key for as much as a minute or two. Nothing but grey screen and spinning wheel.
2. Reset NVRAM/PRAM: CMDR+POption: Computer restarted but still goes into Grey Screen, spinning wheel and stays there forever.
3. CMD +S: I read this online. Gave me a black screen with a lot of information, but I don't know how to read the computer jargon, let alone know what to do with said info.
4. Disk Utility Repair Disk : Inserted my Leopard install disk. Went to Utility Disk. Performed a Repair Disk and I did get two error messages, something related to id 70000452 should be id 70000450 ( I'm sorry to say I cannot remember the exact error messages). But it showed as repaired. When I did a 2nd Repair Disk, I got the message that the volume appears to be OK. Turned off and on again, nothing but grey screen and wheel.
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I got this about 4 times.
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I've read that these messages can be ignored. Is this true? I verified permissions after that, rebooted and still the same grey screen and wheel.
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Locked Gray Apple Screen

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