OS X :: Stuck On Blue Screen And Gray Gear Spinning On Boot Up?
Mar 30, 2009
Everything was fine until this morning when i came into work, started up my Macbook as usual from sleep mode. was able to use OS X for a little while, had to leave to go onsite so i locked my screen (i use sizzle keys and made Command + L to lock my screen to the log on prompt). as soon as the cube spins to the logon screen, BOOM, all i see is the solid light blue screen just sit there. i walk away and 5 minutes later, it's still on there, can't recover or go back to my desktop, so i force shut down (hit the power button, and attempt to reboot the OS X. then thats when it all gets bad. Everytime i boot into OS X it just sits there with the blue screen and flickers back and forth with the gray gear wheel spinning and so forth.
Ok, so next check, i go to boot into my Boot Camp partition into Vista. no problems, was able to boot in my boot camp partition without any problems (im typing this in boot camp at this moment.)
So far i've been able to boot into my Boot Camp and the OS X Restore Disc without any problems.
I booted into the OS X boot disc, and ran Disk Utility, ran the perrmissions check and the disk check and both fixed problems aparently on my OS X partition. went to boot back into OS X, blue screen.
So now i do the PRAM and NVRAM reset doing Command+Option+P+R and again booted into OS X. blue screen.
Booted into Safe Mode (Safe Boot) took awhile, but again. stuck at blue screen and if i press any keys or move the mouse, the grey gear spins for like 10 seconds and just goes back to the blue screen. and the process goes over and over again.
(later on this afternoon) I even ran FSCK to check the volume for problems. "it appears to be OK"
The good thing atleast in this situation is that i can access my OS X partition in Vista (via MacDrive) without any problems, so if having to reload my previous Time Machine backup (which stupid me forgot to back up my system over 60 days ago ) or having to just Archive my OS X and reinstall it, that will have to be my final choice. But i don't REALLY want to have to do this all over again if at all possiable.
View 4 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
May 15, 2012
I have an iMac G5 stuck on the gray screen with spinning gear. I woke up to it being stuck on a blue screen, then force quit and now it's stuck on gray with spinning gear.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Nov 23, 2007
I started this topic on the Garage Band forum because I was having trouble with Garage Band '08 when my computer crashed and will not restart afterwards. Garage Band was crashing 2 out of every 3 attempts at recording, and I would have to use Force Quit to escape and start over. Then, while I was in the middle of a very complex project involving Garage Band, iTunes, Finale (music notation program), and Microsoft Word, the computer froze up and I hit restart, thinking that would solve the problem. Big mistake - the computer has not been able to restart since then. I have a late 2005 G5 power mac with 1 GB of memory, 230 GB hard drive (or something like that) and no additional gizmos installed, running OS X 10.4.4. I had upgraded to iLife '08 a month or so ago and have had problems since with unusual crashes and freezes, especially involving Garage Band '08.
When I boot, I get to the gray opening screen with the gray apple logo and the spinning gear (is it really called an "intergalactic frisbee?"), and no further. The fans come on (and begin to ramp up to a huge noise after two minutes or so), the white LED light comes on steadily. I've disconnected all peripherals except my keyboard and mouse (Kensington USB keyboard and Logitech Mouse, both of which seem to work OK still). I can use the keyboard to open the CD/DVD player, and I can start the computer with both the Apple Installer disk and with Disk Warrior 4.0. I've repaired everything I can find with both programs, verified everything available, used Disk Warrior to examine corrupted files, and removed all the .plist files that it said were broken and could not be fixed. The only thing I can't find is that it says I am missing a "tmp" folder in my HD/private/ folder, which I can't seem to locate on the directory on Disk Warrior. Both programs say that all my hardware is fine, and that everything else is OK too. Puzzling. I removed the battery and tested it (it was OK), replaced it, and reset the PMU button on the motherboard even though I know all you have to do is unplug the back for a few minutes or so.............
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jan 7, 2010
My 4 month old Macbook Pro suddenly shuts down with a blue screen and a spinning gear(like on the start-up) thats lasts for like 10 seconds. Could you suggest anything I can do? I've already tried resetting PRAM, SMC, ran in safe mode, and repaired permissions but nothing works!The last thing i remembered doing before this happened was a 7-pass Free Space Erase.
View 8 Replies
View Related
Mar 21, 2012
My MacBook pro freezes at start up at the gray screen with spinning gear. I did a firmware update yesterday and this happened upon restart. MacBook pro purchased new early 2011 lion
Info:
MacBook Pro, iOS 5.1
View 6 Replies
View Related
Apr 26, 2012
All I get is the blue screen and a recurring spinning gear. What should I do?
Info:
Mac, Mac OS X (10.6.6), Airport / Time Machine
View 5 Replies
View Related
Feb 17, 2012
I Have a MacBook pro 17" 2009 with OS 10.7 Lion, I was doing the updates in the middle of the updates give a error and say you need to restart, Now, when I restarted it is showing gray screen with apple logo and spinning gear and is not moving beyond that (even after 3 hours).I tried Resetting my mac PRAM and NVRAM, nothing, I tried Safe Mode, I tried verbose mode(command V) and is show me this,The system bootstrapper has crached: Trace/BPT trap: 5. I don't have originals cd I lose them when I move.and Lion I'm download from app store I don't Have DVDÂ I don't care about information on my mac, I backup everything daily. I just want to make it work again.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 17" 2009
View 2 Replies
View Related
Nov 12, 2007
I have a 1.83 Ghz MBP with 512 mb of RAM (lame I know). The other day someone was using my computer to burn a CD on iTunes when all of my programs began failing. On instinct I rebooted my computer to solve the problem. Alas, now I cant boot past the grey apple screen, and the gear is spinning away. Saddest part of the story is that I had time set aside to back up my computer the day after this happened . Anyway what is the best thing to do from here? I haven't made any moves to fix it yet really, so what is the best thing that I can do to try and get my files back?
Information:
MacBook Pro
Mac OS X (10.4.10)
Grey Screen, Spinning Gear
View 3 Replies
View Related
Mar 13, 2012
My early Intel iMac (2006) won't shut down - gray spinning wheel and blue screen for more than 2 hours now. Can I safely turn it off with the power button? (I'm a little paranoid after a bad experience doing that with my MacBook Pro).what I should I do then?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.7)
View 3 Replies
View Related
Apr 24, 2012
I have a very old IMac which I purchased back in 2005, and has been working fine. I have left it in storage about 1 and 1/2 years ago. Just now I try to restart it, the screen is forever stuck in the grey screen with the spinning wheel. I tried many times off-on, hold down the apple function key but none worked. I no longer have the rebooting CD with me. I wonder whether the computer can still be saved? I have already backed up the contents so it doesn't matter if fixing the computer requires me to delete all my old files. I think it's tiger or earlier that it's using.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.4)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Dec 26, 2010
I have a 1st generation macbook pro running snow leopard 10.6. I've been trying to install windows xp, vista, or 7 using bootcamp but for some odd reason i cannot boot into the cd. I put the cd in and made sure the macbook is reading it (which it is because the icon shows up on the desktop) before i hit "start installation". the laptop would restart but it doesnt boot into the cd, it just goes right into the gray screen and stays there while i hear the cd spinning. I've installed windows xp using this method but that was about 4 years ago, for some reason the hard drive died on me so i have to do this whole process over again. I dont recall having this problem either.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jul 23, 2010
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: CMD+R+P+Option: 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.......
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jun 24, 2014
Last week my macbook pro started have gray or blue screen problem, it won't boot all the time I turn on, instead I will turn into gray or blue screen and won't do anything else, the OS is to the latest version, and if it start normally it goes blue or gray screen everytime I use final cut pro, I mainly use this mac for editing videos, I try everything like safe mode, I even format the hard drive but the problem still there...
View 5 Replies
View Related
Apr 27, 2008
trying to boot in Leopard my Mac Pro will get the the gray loading screen with the "loading circle" and just sit there forever. Than after a bit it will just stop and the whole computer can shut itself down. I just installed the 8800gt upgrade kit last week, and have had no problems at all for the past week. The only thing that changed that may be related is the 8800GT XP Driver. I installed the latest beta driver for it under XP in boot camp because it wasn't working properly with the default boot camp drivers. So I can correctly boot in the XP via boot camp, but trying to boot in Leopard it just hangs at the gray loading screen.
View 15 Replies
View Related
Aug 23, 2009
Last weekend, my white Macbook was requiring a software update to 10.5.8. So I said, go for it and let it restart. That's when the trouble happened.
It began to restart but just stuck on the gray apple screen with the gear circle thing spinning. I tried several times to restart, but it never worked. I did all the things I knew to do (boot from DVD and run disk utility to repair permissions, zapped PRAM, ran it in the fsck thing; Booting in safe mode wouldn't work). So I booted from my backup and used SuperDuper to rewrite my boot drive. (I guess I should point out that when booting from my backup, I was able to access all my files on my internal HD, it just wouldnt boot). After doing that revert thing to 10.5.7, everything worked fine.
So then I tried to update again this weekend. Same thing happened. I've tried the same steps. I can still get to anything I've added to my regular drive since my backup and all that. Just won't boot from that main drive.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jul 8, 2010
I have a four year old Macbook that's not in the best of shape, but it hasn't failed me like this before.. ever.
I installed a new security update yesterday morning along with the new iTunes, and it worked alright for most of the day.
Around 10:30 or so, it just shut off.
I tried to turn it back on and was faced with the gray apple logo and the horrible spinning icon.
I've tried booting it up in safe mode, verbose mode, and even resetting the PRAM, and nothing works!
It eventually did go to a blue screen after maybe three or four hours, (I fell asleep so I'm not sure) but it still wouldn't let me do anything.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Mar 26, 2010
My intel mini (2008, I think) won't boot. I ran Disk Utility and then Disk Warrior from my Macbook Pro, then I tried single-user mode. Everything came back "OK" but it still won't boot. It gets to the Apple logo with the spinning gear, spins 1-2 times, then freezes. It just sits, frozen, until I hold the power button and force it to turn off.
View 3 Replies
View Related
May 4, 2012
My iMac will not boot past the logo and spinning gear (After a Rogue Amoeba update). I can't access the recovery disk I made on a flash drive. (Am I doing it correctly? - Hold down option while switching on? It just stays on the logo).
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 7 Replies
View Related
May 12, 2012
My iMac won't boot up fully. It stays stuck in the gray screen with the pinwheel spinning, then after about 5 minutes just shuts itself off.
Info:
iMac (20-inch Late 2006)
View 4 Replies
View Related
May 31, 2012
Original MacBook Pro is stuck on blue screen. Restarted, then went to gray background with the apple logo....now on to a plain blus screen......isn't moving off of that.Â
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Original MacBook Pro w/ core duo
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jul 25, 2010
For several weeks, my black MacBook (2008) has been acting odd. Certain applications won't open, and when I attempt to open them, the computer makes a quiet clicking noise, like the drive is failing. Last week, when trying to boot it, the thing just wouldn't. Stuck on the grey Apple logo screen. Assuming a hard drive problem or failure, I ran the tests. I ran Disk Utility from the Snow Leopard install disk, checked & repaired permissions, checked & repaired disk. All okay. I ran the Apple Hardware Test from the install disk that came with the computer, using the test that runs for an hour or so, and all appears to be fine. The computer won't boot into safe mode. I've tried flashing the PRAM. I doubt I could achieve much through target disk mode, as I've already run Disk Utility. What's left to do? Something doesn't add up here.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 14, 2012
Has anyone exoerienced upon startup the Grey Screen with the Apple Logo, Spinning Gear and a Progress Bar? This is a sudden issue which just started and delays my startup to 4/5 minutes. My system worked fine till recently when this issue appeared: MacMini 2009(late) OSX(Lion)!
Info:Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 128GB SSD, Data Doubler 750GB Drive
View 7 Replies
View Related
Nov 30, 2010
I tried fsck -f fsck -y multiple times, booting in safe mode, zaping the pram and all that stuff, nothing as worked. I don't really care about how to fix it but I care more about, Is there any possible way I can get files off of the macbook even though it wont boot. Like is there a way for another computer (windows or mac) to pick it up so I can transfer files? What accessories will I need?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 22, 2012
I have a 2.0 GHz early 2005 Power Mac G5 (7,3) that won't get past the light blue screen at start-up. I've tried everything - reset the PRAM, Apple Hardware Check (on overnight loops, everything came back OK), fsck (all OK), repaired my HD and permissions on it, and then erased the drive using Target Disk Mode and another Mac, and attempted to reinstall OSX from the install disk that came with it (with OSX Tiger). I've tried switching out the RAM with no luck.
The only thing I haven't tried is a new video card (the installed one is an ATI Radeon 9600). Here's what it does: powers on with the usual chime, then moves on to the white Apple screen, the wheel spins, then it moves on to a darker blue screen, then it finally moves on to a lighter blue screen with an arrow, and it just stays there. It will boot into safe mode (pressing shift), but I can't even upgrade to Leopard in safe mode, much less figure out what's wrong.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Nov 13, 2010
My MacBook Pro (The oldest one, I believe) won't start. After OS X 10.6.5, it will sit at the grey screen with the spinning gear. Safe boot does the same. Verbose mode shows it stuck at "vmnet: netif-vmnet8: Adding protocol 2." I can boot off the install CD and single user mode
View 1 Replies
View Related
Dec 30, 2008
A friend of mine brought over his 14" iBook G4, 1.33GHz, 60GB HDD and 1.25 GB RAM. The problem with it is that upon start-up, the grey screen with the apple/turning gear comes up, then after a few moments a blue screen will appear, though no box showing the start-up process. I've run a few basic diagnostics on this, including the lovely disk utility (which did nothing), I've run fsck, zapped the PRAM, etc, no success as of yet. At one point, I received a screen with alternating folders, one showing the smiley mac face, the other folder with a flashing "?". I cannot replicate this for the life of me. I have attempted to acquire files via TDM, though am not able to see the hard drive despite using 2 different laptops. Possibly the firewire cable itself is spent, though it's brand new! Here is where I become increasingly frustrated: I ask my friend for the boot disks as the ones for my own 12" iBook don't work (for whatever reason). He tells me that he loaded Leopard this summer (currently running 10.5.2, no updates loaded since), then proceeds to bring over boot discs for a MacBook...:headdesk: To begin with, it seemed like the HDD was fried, however, after running disk utility (and not hearing any negative sounds), it does appear that the HDD is fine. I'm thinking a kernel panic, though not sure how to resolve these.
View 11 Replies
View Related
Aug 10, 2008
i have an ibook g4, and was using it just fine the other night, then when i came back to it a few minutes later it had shut off completely. now when i boot up, the computer freezes at the spinning gear startup screen or at the blank blue screen immediately after the spinning gear. it will boot in single user mode, but it won't boot up with my os x install disc. does anyone know any unix i could try to use to get my mac up and running again, or has anyone had this same problem and knows a fix for it?
View 8 Replies
View Related
Apr 20, 2012
When I was working on my MBP last night I noticed the computer slowing down, then a sheer black wash went over the screen and a prompt saying I need to manually power off and then power on the computer with several different languages below. When I did that the computer made the on sound, opened up to the apple logo in the center and the spinning gear below. But its stuck there! I can definitely hear the laptop running but it hasnt budged for the last 12 hours.Â
Info:
MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.0.x)
View 4 Replies
View Related
May 8, 2007
Unfortunately I bumped the switch on the power strip that my Mac Mini (1.42ghz G4, OS X 10.3) is plugged into while it was running. Now it won't boot up. All I get is the gray screen with the gray apple logo and the spinning wheel but no OSX.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jun 11, 2012
Gray screen spinning wheel. How do I get it to start?
Info:iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Ernestine123
View 1 Replies
View Related
