Laptops :: Unable To Complete Startup / Grey Screen With Apple And Spinning Wheel Appears
Jul 24, 2010
Hi all, I have two Powerbook G4 laptops. Both have very similar problems. When I try to start up, the grey screen with the apple and spinning wheel appears, but I can't get beyond that. If I walk away for an hour, when I come back there will still be a grey screen with apple and spinning wheel.
I admit I know little about this sort of thing, so I began poking around online for solutions. I tried Tech Tool Deluxe. Inserted the disk and held down "C," but again it never progressed beyond the grey screen with apple and spinning wheel. Most frustrating. Is there any other way of running the disk with the laptop?
Entering the terminal yielded slightly different results on each machine.
...tried /sbin/fsck -fy over and over, always received the same results.
Powerbook #2: Once in terminal, this appears...
jnl: update_fs_block: failed to update block 1073777488 (ret 5)
jnl: journal_open: Error replaying the journal!
hfs: early jnl init: failed to open/create the journal (retval 0)
...and it won't even let me type /sbin/fsck -fy.
I tried plugging both latops into my desktop in target mode. In both cases the target icon appeared on the laptop screen but the hard drive icon never appeared on the desktop screen. I would love to at least retrieve a few files off each machine, if nothing else.
I have a 2008 MacBook which after starting displays a white screen grey apple and spinning wheel Have reset pram Have tried starting holding option when the hard drive appears on screen I click on it and then the up arrow below it this takes me back to the spinning wheel with apple screen I don't have the original CDs that came with the machine
My macbook pro doesn't boot beyond the grey screen with apple icon and spinning wheel. I used the "Option" button to access the Disk Utility function and run Repair Disk and Repair Disk Permissions. Should I restart my computer?
My Macbook with 4 gb RAM won't boot standard, safe, or Recovery.. All three results in grey screen with apple logo and spinning wheel which freezes after a few minutes. It also won't boot a bootable Mavericks usb with install package. I can boot single user mode and also view whats going on in verbose.. I am including a photo of where the script stops. PS: I've already tried resetting PRAM and the SMC has been reset as well.
I rebooted my MacBook Pro (15", i7). When the system started back up, I got a status bar at the bottom of the screen. It took approx two minutes for the status bar to move to completion (almost like it was performing a BIOS update). I then got the gray spinning wheel (gray backdrop, darker gray Apple logo). I tried holding down the CMD and Option keys during a subsequent reboot....nothing changes.
So all of the sudden my mbp will not boot past the spinning wheel/apple screen. I have not let it try for longer than 15 minutes but I don't see the point. I tried to boot in safe mode(hold down shift) but the bar only went to about 1/3 and stopped/disappeared...so I don't know what to do. This shouldn't be happening after a couple months of light use.
Just for extra info:
I am able to boot into windows 7 via boot camp. Cannot boot from cd or go into safe mode.
A few months ago my 2004 iMac froze as I was simply shutting down the power and attempting to restart. I was not installing any new O/S.Today I attempted two things while booting with the O/S recovery disc-1: (a) I slid the disc in and held down the "C" key while I attempted to power it on. Nothing happened and I continued to see the grey screen and spinning wheel.Â
(b) I slid the disc inside and held down the "ALT" key while I attempted to power it on. Three icons showed up: (a) Hard Disk; (b) Recovery Disc; and (c) Test. I clicked on the Test icon and it took me to a new screen with two options: ( i ) Quick Test and ( ii ) Extended Test. I clicked on Quick Test. The first aspect of the Quick Test (I think it was Airport) went through fine and passed. The second aspect of the Quick Test (Logic Board testing) continued to show "In Progress" for a really long time (about 15 mins.). From that I figured something must have gone wrong with the Logic Board.
I have a IMac that suddenly can't move past the grey screen, apple logos, and spinning wheel. I have used the OS system disk to repair the Macintosh HD, the app stated that the repair of the volume was successful, but in trying to use the HD to restart, I am still stuck with the spinning wheel. What should I do next, or what am I doing wrong?Â
I changed the permissions from read only to read and write on my start up HD and chose the change everything inside option to read and write. After I did this, my secondary HD no longer allowed me to use it saying I did not have permission. When I tried to change it all selections were in custom mode and would not accept my changes. Same with my main HD.
I rebooted and the grey screen shows up with icon and no spinning wheel. I tried safe mode...same thing. I even tried booting off my back up firewire drive and got a null sign on the grey screen instead of an apple icon. Booted up from the G5 disk and tried to run utilities permissions repair and it would not do it, gave me an error, "No valid packages". Ran disk repair and it said nothing needs repairing. I then booted up using Disk Warrior and rebuilt the HD's directory successfully, but still the G5 will not boot past the icon grey screen, no spinning wheel. I'm spinning though...HELP, I'm dying here. FYI this is a G5 dual core Cypher running Leopard with 3.5 gigs of ram. The start up HD is 250 gig and the secondary is 500 gig
I own an iBook G4. I could not get it to boot up, it would just go to a grey screen with the apple symbol and a timer/clock that looked like a gear.FYI: I may provide more information than necessary in the text below. I'm not sure what is and isn't relevant.
Following some advice I found in this forum I got out my old OS disks to boot from the disc instead of the hard drive. I intended to archive the old hard drive and install my latest OS (10.4.6 on the disc, 10.4.11 was the version I had been running on the machine, I believe). The machine told me it needed 4.5 Gb to install 10.4.6 Tiger, but I only had 4.0 Gb left on the hard drive. So instead, I archived and installed with the OS that came with the computer originally, 10.3.4.
I got things going, did the archive and install, and got to the log in screen. Unfortunately, I could not remember the password, so I booted up in single user mode, and entered the following to get into the machine:
1. mount -uw / 2. rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone 3. shutdown -h now
This got me in with a new admin login, and I started up in 10.3.4. I soon noticed that I could still see all of the files that I put on the hard drive on my old operating system. I thought I shouldn't be able to see them, but since I could I decided to try to copy them to an external hard drive. When I did, I got an error message saying that there was a read/write error. I was not entirely surprised, but I decided it was time to turn back to the forums for help.
What I want to do is copy everything from my old hard drive onto an external hard drive, make room on the iBook hard drive to reinstall my latest operating system (10.4.6). Once I've done that I'd like to get the essential files back onto the iBook from the external hard drive and continue using my computer (even though it is a dinosaur).
I have a Mac Pro that is stuck at the grey startup screen. Grey apple, spinning wheel. I let it spin for about half an hour and then went on to try other things. Every attempt still leaves me stuck at the spinning grey wheel.
When I turn my MacBook on it does the white screen with the spinning wheel and then goes to the blue screen but it gets stuck on that screen for about a minute or two and goes to my login in screen any idea whats going on with it i have not changed anything but the other day I was turning it on and there was a bug on the keyboard and I went to kill it causing my to press some random buttons during the start up and its been doing this ever since.
Ever since I downloaded 10.7.4, a blank grey screen appears at startup. If I click on the mouse, a white square cursor appears which I can drag around and `uncover` a place to input password. Then the galaxy image appears, and I have to input password again.
I had permission problems (locked time machine drive) so I did a full time machine restore.
Did the restart after the restore. Machine won't reboot. I get 'bong', apple logo on grey screen as per normal.
Then blue screen and spinning wheel for approx 7 seconds Then blue screen and black pointer for approx 2 seconds The blue screen spinning wheel / black pointer repeats. Also can't start up from Snow Leopard DVD.
I get exactly the same scenario. I have held down the power key at got the tone. Still won't start. It's an Imac (white one) 1.8Gig Dual with 1.5 gig of ram.
Running Snow leopard. I can see my disc over the ethernet; it is still there as it was sharing with my other machine.
ok my macbook wont boot. i hit the power button, i hear the cd drive move, grey screen comes up with the apply logo and the little progress loading spinner thing, boot sound rings, then it goes to a dark blue screen for a second then it turns a lighter blue and the cursor is there and i can move it around, and then nothing happens it just sits there
i tried holding command/option/p/r till i heard the boot noise twice then let go and it stopped at the blue screen again. i didnt download anything new or change any permissions or system settings, just powered off last night and went to turn it on this morning and this happened
I am running an emac with OS X 10.4 installed (I think). Anyway, I've been searching all morning for a solution in the forums, but haven't really seen or been able to solve my problem.
The computer was shut down correctly over the weekend, there are no grinding noises, no error messages, the screen is just stuck on that grey screen with the apple and progress wheel and won't finish booting up all the way.
It's happened once before, but I just did a hard restart on it, and it has worked fine ever since. Never had any real problems until now, but nothing I have tried from searching on the forums has worked (apple X, option control, restarts, etc.). It won't boot up in any kind of safe mode, that I can figure out.
Is there something I am missing, or not trying, or am I just toast?
I was trying to install Windows XP Pro, but for some reason the it wasn't showing another HDD to install Windows on. So I quit the install, and restarted my computer. Now all that happens is the normal grey screen appears (with no Apple logo), then it goes to a black screen and has the blinking cursor (Kinda like DOS).
I woke up to my MacBook fan going nuts. Had an error message on the screen that said something about a disk error. The machine wouldn't do anything (force quit, launch app) so I hard powered down. Now.....NOTHING. All I get is the white screen, followed by the flashing folder. Here is what I have tried so far.
I already booted from the restore cd that came with it and opened disk utility. The hard drive shows up as something like disk1 but not "Macintosh HD."Tried to repair permissions and got an error message. Thought then to do an archive and install......and the HDD isn't even a viable option to install the OS on.
I had the original (but smaller) HDD that came with my MacBook, so I put it back in and everything booted up just fine and is back up and running. (Thank God for MobleMe that had all my contacts, etc on it). But I still have some info on that other HDD that I need. I ordered a usb enclosure for the drive to maybe try some recovery, but it seems to me that the HDD failed or something. Is there anything else I can do?
I have a macbook 2.16mhz with 2gb ram mid 2007 model. It has started showing the spinning wheel for about 10-20 seconds for the last 3 months and it was getting worse and worse! and it came a time last week when almost every 5 clicks I was doing the wheel was appearing again!
First I thought I had a faulty ram and I ran memtest but everything was ok! then I reinstalled the system but still the problem exists not so ften though.
before I went to bed, I was playing the Sims 2, when my iBook G4 crashed. Our power cord can be a bit dodgy, so sometimes that happens. I didn't really think about it much, just closed the laptop and went to sleep.Last Monday morning, I opened it and pressed the power button. It began turning on, and got as far as the grey screen with the apple and the spinning circle. And then it just froze. The circle stopped turning.
I freaked out a bit, and restarted it a bunch of times, each time with the same result. (One time it stopped spinning, and then told me a restart was required. Huh. The rest of the times the exact same thing happened though.) I even tried unplugging and removing the battery, but it made no difference. So eventually I just shut it and decided to try again later.Last Tuesday I opened it and pressed the power button without much hope, and again the apple and circle came up just fine, then stopped, but then a bunch of words and numbers popped up.I'm a complete computer noob, but they don't look good to me... or are they good?
Kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 7.9.0: Wed Mar 30 20:11:17 PST 2005; root:xnu/xnu-517.12.7.obj~1/REEASE_PPC
I have had my MacBook for almost two years and the battery had just died on me. So I sent it back to Apple and got a new one. But ever since switching over to this new battery, my computer has had issues starting up. A grey screen fades into white and the Apple logo never appears. The computer will just stay like that for hours. A friend suggested turning the power off and back on, holding apple+ctrl+P+R, which worked.However, the next time I turned my computer on, the screen stayed white again, without an Apple logo. Can you tell me what the deal is? Should I bother reporting this to Apple? Is this permanent damage I'm going to have to go thru everytime I start me laptop?
When I start my Macbook Pro ´13 2013, the grey screen with the apple appears and loads but then it "falls asleep" and when i press a key the mac wakes up but there is a black screen with the cursor.
Things I've tried:
-Safe mode -Verify Disks- But the hard disk appears to be fine -Resetting SMCÂ
Mac won't boot, starts with white apple screen and spinning wheel. Also has grey loading bar which disappears after loaded then stays at white apple screen.
I have an iBook G4 (Late 2004) that I just recently upgraded to Leopard using the 10.5.6 DVD included in the Mac Box Set. Whenever it boots, after the chime the screen stays black until the login screen. This happened occasionally with Tiger, but I found a post somewhere where someone suggested to hold the power button while powering on until you hear a beep. That solved it in Tiger, but I have not once seen a grey Apple screen in Leopard.
I forgot to mention that I have reset the PRAM and PMU.
I have an intel imac - can't tell you much about the details as I can't get any info out of it. I installed snow leopard about a year ago - no issue since then other than occassionally the screen goes black but nothing major.Yesterday, I backed up to my usual passport backup and then today, it froze. I couldn't turn it off or restart at all so resorted to the power button. Since then, I can turn it on, it goes to the grey screen (no blue screen) and I get the apple logo and the spinning clock/wheel. For hours and hours....So, I tried one of the apple support pages and worked through - peripherals, safe boot, NVRAM, PRAM, tried to reboot with mac osx disc (the original not snow leopard) - nothing. Absolutely nothing changes - same old grey screen, apple logo and spinning clock/wheel.
