Mac wont boot, hangs at apple logo screen

Hello everyone,
I have a 2006 Imac. This morning I tried to boot and it hung at the silver/white screen with the Apple logo and the spinning circle of lines below it. The computer will just hang at this screen.
Every time I tried to boot I can eventually hear the hard drive turn off. I recognize the sound when the computer was working and I put it to sleep it made the same sound. Anyways, it will hang on that screen for however long before I turn it off. I am no expert with macs, I tried loading the install disc but it wouldn't even load that and now I can't seem to eject the disc either. Please help!

I have been having this problem for the last several weeks on my MacBook Pro–I think a 2006 also. Mine will hang just before the Apple logo so the whole screen will be silver. Every time this happens I turn it off using the power button and just try again. Usually on the second try it works, sometimes the third. I've been experimenting with how long I hold the power button down, although it shouldn't be too sensitive to that and I don't think I am finding a correlation. I have had this occur in the past but only as flukes, not as a consistent pattern like lately. I'm getting worried that someday this thing will just not start up.

Similar Messages

  • Radeon 5770 in 2008 Mac Pro, won't boot - hangs at Apple logo screen??

    Okay, so I had the Radeon 2600 XT and it kept giving me issues with pink & white checkerboards and freezing, then eventually wouldn't let me boot past the white/grey apple logo loading screen. Now, today I installed Apple Radeon 5770, just installed, got the MiniDisplay to DVI-D adapter and everything, but it STILL won't let me get past the white/grey apple screen! I can't seem to get the DVD drive to open either. Both of my hard drives have been working fine and I've even swapped slots and i still can't get past the white screen! What gives? I just dropped over $300 for this, so you can imagine my dismay and frustration. Can someone please help me with some ideas? Would be GREATLY appreciated.
    It's a 2008 Mac Pro dual 2.8Ghz (3,1), running 10.5.8
    M

    Yeah, ok thanks for the response about the screen! So, I don't have 10.6.5. I'm running 10.5.8, which the Radeon 5770 says it needs 10.6.5, but -finally- I got my computer to boot up with the 5770 in it, on 10.5. Al I did was hold OPTION+ Power button and it took me to a blue screen, then to my 500 GB new HD. I then switched over to my other username on Macintosh HD (drive that came with the MacPro) and OSX loads fine! I can tell that it still needs to be on 10.6.5, so I can download the drivers because the text is ever so slightly fuzzy, and the color isn't tuned well (too much contrast) and images take a little longer to load/ are a bit laggy. I'm just glad it's up and running! No more pink transparent checkerboards, and loud *** fan sounds! I am wondering though, what was causing this hold up? Is it only booting up because I have the 10.5.2 install disc in the SuperDrive? I almost don't want to take it out and try without it, after the trouble i've had, just in case lol.  I'd like to have an idea as to why, because I don't want to mask a problem, and have it eventually turn into a catastrophe.

  • Power Mac G5 wont boot past the Apple Logo

    Mac: Power Mac G5 2.7Ghz DP w/ 4gb RAM (2x1gb, 4x512mb), Leopard
    Last week, I formated this computer and reinstalled OS X 10.5. I updated everything, reinstalled all my applications and replaced my documents. Everything was good for a couple days. I have and HP 1350 all-in-one printer (which HP no long has mac support for that model, so I can only use the scanner as a photocopier, but that's not the issue, it prints fine and I have printed files since the formatting) The printer is connect via USB to my Power Mac and then shared on my home network, wirelessly, with 2 other MacBooks and a 27" iMac. My roommate was trying to print something from his MacBook. In the printer queue on the MacBook, the file would say it was printing, but nothing would actually printer. When I went to the printer settings on the Power Mac, the dialog box said the printer was "in use." I reset the printer, nothing happened. I restarted the Power Mac, properly, and now the computer wont boot past the Apple logo. The spinning gear appears and spins for a minute or 2 and then it will just reboot on its own. It will just keep doing this in a continuous loop.
    I've tried to boot into safe mode (holding shift) but it still does the same thing.
    I manage to get the CD drive open by booting into open Firmware. I restarted the computer and was able to boot from the Leopard disc. I ran disk utility, and repaired the drive and the permission but everything was ok.
    I've unplugged any USB device connect but to no avail.
    I really don't want to reinstall Leopard again. it took almost 8 hours to install all the applications (such as Logic, Komplete 5, etc) and I had not setup time machine. There are some document files that I would prefer not to loose, but could deal with the loss.
    any suggestions?

    Ok, so I reinstalled Leopard, all my documents were in the "Previous Systems" folder, and the applications where present. I went to Software Updates to download all the need updates, which included 10.5.8, itunes, security fixes, etc. It notified my that I would have to restart. I click ok, everything was logged out and the updates started installing. As the computer restarted itself after the updates, i had the same issue again, where it would go to the Apple logo and then restart itself. The second time around, it just froze and the warning "You need to restart your computer" with the power logo in the background came up. So I manually restarted my computer and everything logged in correctly. I restarted it a couple time to see if I could duplicate the errors but everything keeps working properly. Now I'm kind of scare to restart my computer.
    Any suggestions as to why this would be happening? Is this most likely a software issue or a hardware issue? This never happened before I formatted last week. The last time I formatted the computer prior to that was less than a year ago.

  • IMac G4 hangs at apple logo screen after 10.5.8 update

    Hello, thanks for any help you can provide with this problem.
    Machine is iMac G4 flat panel. Did an erase and install of Leopard over firewire from iMac G5. Immediately copied 10.5.8 combo update I'd downloaded earlier from the G5 and ran it on the G4. The update completed successfully, albeit slowly, and I clicked restart. After a long wait at blank desktop, machine rebooted on its own. It got as far as the Apple logo screen with spinner spinning, and then it hung. I didn't want to jump to conclusions that it was indeed frozen, so I let it sit there and spin for at least 2 hours. Even for an old G4 this seemed like a bit much, so I forced it to power off and tried again. Still hangs.
    At this point I figure something went wrong with the update, so I did another erase and install of virgin Leopard over firewire from the same G5. Repeated update process. It once again completed successfully, I clicked restart, it paused, then rebooted on its own again. To my great dismay, it once again hung at the spinny spinner Apple logo screen.
    Now, this is the fourth G4 machine I've done this on in the last week, and the other three are running normally. 1 was another iMac G4, the other 2 were eMac G4's.
    Any suggestions?

    Interestingly, I brought the G4 into work today and connected it to the G5 with FireWire and turned both on. For some reason (I'm not Mac Pro here, so this might be obvious to some of you) the G5 booted from the G4's HDD and the system started up just fine. I ran repair permissions on the G4's HDD and restarted it. It now boots up fine. Not sure if it was the repairing permissions that fixed it or booting the OS on a different machine. Either way, problem is resolved. Thanks for your input.
    Edit: Fixed typo
    Message was edited by: armiller76

  • MacBook won't boot past the apple logo screen!

    So my MacBook started freezing up and I went to restart it and it wouldn't boot past the grey logo screen with the spinning gear. Its pretty old and therefor still has the Leopard operating system. I've been trying to run Disk Repair using a Snow Leopard install disc but it just gets about 30% done and then doesn't go any further. Eventually I stopped the disk repair and just tried installing OSX but when it asks me what drive I want to install on there are no options available to click. I've got alot of unsaved work on this old thing and would love to get it running soon! Any help would be extremely appreciated! Thanks

    I've been trying to run Disk Repair using a Snow Leopard install disc
    Install discs are "machine specific" .. you can only use the install disc that came with the Mac for repairing the hard disk.
    You may not have enough free space on the startup disk.
    Follow the directions for starting up in Safe Mode
    A Safe Mode boot can take a little longer then a normal boot so be patient.
    When you see the Desktop, right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure there's a minimum of 15% free disk space.
    If there isn't enough free space, help here > Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
    You can use Disk Utility to verify the startup disk from Safe Mode but you can't repair the disk. You will need the install disc that came with your MacBook for that. While you have Disk Utillity open check S.M.A.R.T. status at the bottom of the window. Make sure it says:  Verified
    When you are finished, click the Apple menu icon top left in the screen. From the drop down menu click Restart.
    If you don't have the original install discs you may be able to request a replacement. You can get replacement System Install & Restore CD/DVDs from Apple's Customer Support - in the US, (800) 767-2775 - for a nominal S&H fee. You'll need to have the model and/or serial number of your Mac available.

  • Computer wont boot up past apple logo

    my computer has recently stopped booting up and wont get past the gray apple logo screen unless its off for a while...however when it does it just freezes up and I start this process all over again...any suggestions?

    Being that it is Lion, you have a Recovery HD that you boot into in order to run Disk Utility. Hold down cmd-r while restarting and it will boot into the Recovery HD. From there you can run Disk Utiility and repair the disk.
    You should take it in to Apple again. The odds of you getting two bad drives are pretty slim and I would imagine something else is causing the problems and killing the drives.  If you can make it through exams and still get it back to them under warranty, you might consider that. Make sure you point out that you had brought it in before and they replaced the drive. If this drive is also, bad, make sure they look for other problems such as the logic board.

  • My i mac wont boot up past the start screen

    My imac wont boot up past the grey screen with the apple logo, the progress bar gets to about midway and stalls at this point.
    I even left the system on in this state for the remainder of the day to no avail.
    The original problem which resulted in the grey screen, was that when the system did boot up i had a black screen with only the task bar, however when the task bar tabs opened i could not get any of the options to actually operate/function. At this point i turned the system of and after the third attempt the system faltered to the grey screen.
    I have tried the Safe mode boot/nram/pra/smc rests but the system still stalls midway on the progress bar, even holding the c key.
    Help please....

    See if the computer will boot into the Recovery Partition (Command + R on startup) if it won't that means the HD has likely crashed and the ONLY thing to do is get it serviced.

  • My Mac g5 is stuck on apple logo screen, please help!

    I have a Mac g5 before they had intel (so its pretty old) and today it was stuck on the apple logo screen and the fans become really loud. I don't know what's wrong with it, I'm scared to do anything as I don't wanna lose all my files. I was going to take it to the apple store to get it fixed but if there is nothing they can do I don't wanna take a 45 min drive to get there. Any info will help! Thanks!
    Megan

    Hi Megan,
    Most Apple stote don't know what a G5 is, nor will most even look at them or work on them, so call 1st if deciding to try that.
    If worse comes to worse we can easily pull the drive(s) & get the info back most likely.
    You'll have to power off, then hold alt key at bootup to see if any boot disks show up.
    If not...
    Does it boot to Single User Mode, CMD+s keys at bootup, if so try...
    /sbin/fsck -fy
    Repeat until it shows no errors fixed.
    (Space between fsck AND -fy important).
    Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck...
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
    Do you have the G5's Install Disc?

  • IPhone 4s updated to ios 6 and now hangs on apple logo screen! Any ideas please?

    Hi, my friend has updated her iPhone 4s to iOS 6 a week ago and since then it just randomly crashes and she's left with just the apple logo screen flashing on and off. After several attempts to restore the iPhone it's finally restored as a new phone and was working fine until she switched the phone off. When switching it back on its got as far as the logo screen and again it's just flashing on and off and has been for the last 30 minutes.
    As the phone was absolutely fine before installing iOS 6 we have assumed its a bug with that rather than a problem with hardware.
    Has anyone else had this problem after installing iOS 6 or do you think it's a coincidence and it in fact the phone itself that needs looking at?
    Any useful suggestions would be much appreciated.

    Yeah think she's going to take it back to the shop as its not even a year old yet! It eventually stopped flashing on and off the apple logo and the whole screen went blue! Rebooted it and it's again back to the flashing apple screen.
    Hopefully they can fix or replace it.
    Thankyou for your reply, much appreciated.

  • Wont boot past the apple logo, what do I do?!

    Suddenly when I restarted my iMac, it won't boot up past the screen with the Apple logo. i have tried holding down the Option key and have gotten the screen with three thumbnails, the refresh, the picture of my HD and the right arrow, nothing works, help!

    What are those 3 icons?  I'm guessing one of them is "Macintosh HD."  What are the other two?
    You can try starting up with the Shift key held down.  That will do a Safe Boot
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564
    which may (?) allow you to start up to the Desktop.  If that works, there are a few things you can do...
    I don't have the original OS install disk
    It doesn't need to be the "original" installation disc.  You may be able to get a Snow Leopard installation disc by calling 1-800-MY-APPLE, which is the number for the Apple Store.  Snow Leopard is no longer sold from the web site, but I heard you can still order it if you call them directly and ask for it.  The price should be $29 plus tax.  You really need to have a disc, so you can run maintenance, and re-install the OS, if necessary.
    But, I want to confirm it has Snow Leopard currently installed.  I only said Snow Leopard, because your profile says "10.6.8."  If that info is out-of-date and it has Mac OS X 10.7.x (Lion) installed, you don't need an installation disc.

  • Cannot boot (Hangs on Apple logo/spinning wheel)

    I just turned off my computer by holding down the power button after Parallels froze on me, and now my Mac won't start up. It hangs on the white screen with the Apple logo and spinning wheel. Some more info:
    1. I can get into Hardware Test and Mac OS X Installer
    2. I have a Time Machine backup (if nothing else works)
    3. I have tried Disk Utility and Hardware Test and they both tell me everything looks "OK"
    Do I have any other options besides reinstalling Leopard? And what could have caused this to happen???

    Hi
    im experiencing the same problem as well
    i downloaded and installed a few updates on sunday and i thought it was normal for the apple logo and spinning wheel to come out after the update
    i went to bed thinking that it would take awhile
    when i woke up it was still stuck at the grey screen
    can any1 please help?
    i dont hv my dvds with me (studying in nz, dvds are at home)
    ive tried pressing shift to go into safe mode but i cant (maybe doing it wrongly)
    n ive tried resetting pram
    btw the MBP im using was on tiger but i upgraded to leopard last year
    any suggestions please, really need to get on my assignments and all :P

  • IMac won't boot, hangs on white logo screen and wheel stops spinning

    I have a 4 year old 24" iMac - 4GB RAM, Lion 10.7.3 - that froze up in the middle of opening a PDF file in preview.  I powered it off by holding in the button only to discover it will not restart.  It gets as far as the white screen with the Apple logo and the "spinning" circle of lines and the this stops spinning after about 15 seconds and it will not do anything else.
    I have tried:
    resetting the SMC
    resetting the PRAM
    Booting:
    with only keyboard plugged in
    in safe mode
    from USB (Lion) Recovery thumb drive
    from MBP in target mode
    from Time Machine backup
    from Leopard and Snow Leopard DVD's
    In all cases with the boot the HDD is shown along with the other drive(s) connected and I can select these other drives but the result is always the same.  In safe mode it just hangs after going through everything.
    As the iMac isn't under warranty I decided to swap the HDD out with a 1TB working one from my old (deceased) Time Capsule.  I know this drive still works.  Still the same problem though.  Whilst the imac was apart I checked the onboard CR2032 battery was OK and for any obvious board problems.  Nothing.
    I haven't been able to find anything that relates to not being able to boot of an external drive from searching the web and I now conceed this is most likely a board level failure.  I haven't lost anything as I backup routinely.  My intention was to upgrade when the next model iMac comes along, just wish it ends up being very soon as my MBP is not great for editing photo's.
    If I could get the iMac limping it would help whilst I wait for the next generation iMac, so if anyone can help it would be appreciated.

    I have a 4 year old 24" iMac - 4GB RAM, Lion 10.7.3 - that froze up in the middle of opening a PDF file in preview.  I powered it off by holding in the button only to discover it will not restart.  It gets as far as the white screen with the Apple logo and the "spinning" circle of lines and the this stops spinning after about 15 seconds and it will not do anything else.
    I have tried:
    resetting the SMC
    resetting the PRAM
    Booting:
    with only keyboard plugged in
    in safe mode
    from USB (Lion) Recovery thumb drive
    from MBP in target mode
    from Time Machine backup
    from Leopard and Snow Leopard DVD's
    In all cases with the boot the HDD is shown along with the other drive(s) connected and I can select these other drives but the result is always the same.  In safe mode it just hangs after going through everything.
    As the iMac isn't under warranty I decided to swap the HDD out with a 1TB working one from my old (deceased) Time Capsule.  I know this drive still works.  Still the same problem though.  Whilst the imac was apart I checked the onboard CR2032 battery was OK and for any obvious board problems.  Nothing.
    I haven't been able to find anything that relates to not being able to boot of an external drive from searching the web and I now conceed this is most likely a board level failure.  I haven't lost anything as I backup routinely.  My intention was to upgrade when the next model iMac comes along, just wish it ends up being very soon as my MBP is not great for editing photo's.
    If I could get the iMac limping it would help whilst I wait for the next generation iMac, so if anyone can help it would be appreciated.

  • Ideacenter K430 wont boot, hangs on "Lenovo" logo

    a couple of weeks ago I installed windows 7 64 bit, thought I had most of the drivers installed.. everything was working fine.
    today I tried to plug in a USB memory stick and find that my USB drivers were not installed, no biggie, so I go to Lenovo's website, download the proper drivers, install them, "Windows needs to reboot for changes to take effect", Okay, so I let it reboot.
    Now it just hangs on bootup at the "Lenovo" logo.....  tried rebooting again, same thing...  **bleep**?
    I tried F1, F2, F8, F9 at boot, nothing happens, just sits at "Lenovo" logo...
    so, what do I do now?

    unplug the usb device then remove the plug lead from the pc, hit the power button a couple of times then reconnect the power and try again
    Thx dave
    yoga 2, lenovo b540
    3 custom gaming pc systems

  • Single-User Mode Copying Files/System Does not Boot Past Apple Logo Screen

    I have a Macbook 2.0GHZ, 2GB RAM, that recently tried to download a secuirty and keynot update. Following the download the system will no longer boot past the Apple Logo Screen with the spinning wheel. I do not have access to a OS disk yet or to a firewire cable either. I've have seen posts from others that describe how to use traget disk mode to reinstall the secuirty update manually and then they can boot their computer. Safe mode will not work. I did boot into single-user mode and run the disk utility there and it says my HD is OK. Since I do not have a firewire or an OS Disk, I am wondering if there is a way to copy those files i need to a USB pen stick then install them onto the computer via single-user mode, considering this is the only way I can boot and manipulate the machine at this time. If this is not possible please let me know so I can find a way to scrounge up a firewire cable or disk. Thank you in advance for any assistance.
    Ted K

    Thanks to Limnos and BDAqua I know you guys have helped others with these kind of problems from the other posts I read. I just want to list what I did exactly in case anyone wants to try to do this with a usb drive or does not have access to a boot disk or firewire cable.
    1: Install security update on a pen drive
    2: Boot in single user mode, CMD-S on startup
    3: /sbin/mount -uw /
    4: mkdir /Volumes/usb (usb can be any name, name of usb drive or anything you want)
    5: ls /dev (you need to get the drive listing for the usb drive to mount it appropriately, it should be disk#s# but this is close to what the HD and Cd drives are listed as so you may need to list once before you put the usb stick in and once ater. I had issues inserting the usb drive in single-user mode and it would freeze up the root drive)
    6: /sbin/mount_msdos /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/usb (this mounts the usb drive, i had to use msdos because of how my usb drive was formatted, you may need to check your usb drive format, hfs is the apple format for usb drives but it did not work for me)
    7: cp /Volumes/usb/SecUpd2009-001Intel.dmg (this copies the files from the usb drive to the root drivel, at this point you no longer need the usb drive)
    8: hdiutil mount /SecUpd2009-001Intel.dmg (this mounts the disk image)
    9: cd /Volumes/"Security Update 2009-001" (after i mounted the image this is how it appeared in the Volumes directory, you might need to do ls /Volumes to get the name, the quotes are important to get the whole file directory changed)
    10: installer -pkg SecUpd2009-001Intel.pkg -target / (this installs the acutal update, i used the SecUpd2009-001Intel.pkg and it worked though I think you might be able to use "Security Update 2009-001" with quotes as well.)
    11: reboot
    i hope this helps anyone looking to do this. Thanks again to those who helpes and all the other posts that had information that helped me identify and then fix my issue! I still love my mac.

  • What do i do if my ipod's screen blanks out and wont get off the apple logo?

    what do i do if my ipod screen blanks out and wont get off the apple logo screen what do i do i need help asap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    See Here...
    iOS: Not responding or does not turn on
    Try this First... You will not lose ant data...
    Press and Hold the Sleep/Wake Button and the Home Button at the Same Time...
    Wait for the Apple logo to Appear...
    Usually takes about 15 - 20 Seconds... ( But can take Longer...)
    Release the Buttons...
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1430
    If that does not work... try letting the battery fully drain.
    Then Charge for an Hour and try the suggestions again.

Maybe you are looking for