TS3148 my mackbook air starts up with a  persistent grey screen, apple logo and spinning gear

my mackbook air starts up with a persistent grey screen, apple logo and a spinning gear. It will not show the login window

Press and hold the power button down to force a hardware shutdown (emergency use only!)
Next find the Shift key and hold it and press the power button, the machine will boot into Safe Mode.
Next backup your files to a external drive just in case.
Emergency backup procedure
Drag and drop copy your users file folders (music, pictures, documents etc) to a regular external powered drive as soon as possible.
Do not use, setup or trust only TimeMachine at this troubled time as it will copy corrupted data and we need just your users files safe just in case. TimeMachine cannot be used with a Windows PC.
Unmount and Disconnect all external drives once the backup process is completed.
Note:
If you have any over 4GB sized files, those won't copy to a standard formatted FAT32/MSDOS drive from the factory, if you need to save these 4GB+ files use another blank/empty drive and use Disk Utility to format it 1 Partition, Option: GUID,  Format: OS X Extended Journaled (or the standard default one for older Mac's).
Mac's cannot copy to nor format a NTFS  drive. ExFAT format to be used with a Windows machine must be right click formatted by Windows, not OS X (does it wrong) XP macines can install a free exFAT update from Microsoft. Vista-Win 8 can format exFAT.
Formatting a drive will erase all data on it.
Most commonly used backup methods
Your problem is likely due to a incompatible third part at boot kernel extension file that some program installed into OS X at some time.
If you can recall which programs you installed using your Admin password then that's a good place to start and update or uninstall those programs.
The next solution is a #8 Reinstall Just OS X + Software Update fully,  this will replace OS X with a new copy, fix OS X if it's the cause and kick out ALL third party kext files out of OS X.
You also can manually drag and drop the third party kext files (if you know what they are) out of of the System/Library/Extensions folder and reboot.
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
Solving at boot kext issues in Snow Leopard

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    MrTuRtLe03 wrote:
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    <Edited by Host>

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