OS X :: Unable To Boot System / Grey Screen With Apple Logo At Startup
Jan 12, 2011
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).
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Oct 1, 2010
The other day my 1st gen MBP functioned without any probs, until it suddenly powered down. After I removed the question marks from my eyes, I offcourse tried to reboot it.
But it never makes it beyond the grey screen, sometimes untill the apple logo, sometimes not even that far.
Offcours I googled around first to gather some info before I decided to put this problem down on this board. I found this could be a HDD failure, but in those cases, with other people, it could be powered holding apple + s, and doing some checks that way.
Mine doesn't even come that far
I have a second hand 1st gen MBP with upgraded HDD and RAM, snow leopard, and coincidently since last week no more battery... so i may have powered down a completely unprepared mac by tripping over the wire, once or twice...
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Jan 25, 2010
Sometimes, when I turn on my iMac (10.6.2), the system will not load, you can see the grey screen but empty, no apple logo there. I have to force a shutdown pressing the power button and when I turn it on for the second time it will work properly.
It only happens once in a while but I cannot understand why, since nothing changes.
PS.- I have verified my disk with the disk utility and everything seems fine.
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Jun 26, 2014
I have a MacBook Pro from 2010 I believe with iOS Maverick installed. (MacKeeper is also on there, which I just found out is apparently malware)
So three days ago I was watching Netflix, the image froze, but the audio kept going. Figured my internet was slow, so I waited a little, nothing happened. pressed escape to leave the full screen mode, but nothing happened. None of the keys would do anything, not even the sound or brightness keys. So I did a force shut down by holding down the power button.
I waited a little, then decided to turn it back on. Start up sound played, white screen with grey apple logo and loading gear appeared together with a grey loading bar. I figured that this meant it had to repair something. But after about a minute or two it just went to a black screen/ shut down. I left it off for a day, tried it again, same thing. Next day I tried booting it up while holding the shift key to do the safe boot (I knew it wouldn't work since I already had the grey loading bar anyways), same thing happened.
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Oct 30, 2008
I had been using my iMac all night, when all of a sudden the bouncing beach ball appeared and everything became unresponsive, apart from the mouse cursor itself. It might be worth noting that a few hours prior to this, I plugged in an external hard drive to burn off a DVD. This external hard drive has two partitions, the first being a restored image of Leopard; and the second, my out of date backup ("yes, I know").
I subsequently restarted my machine, enjoyed the chime, pondered the excessively long start up and looked bemused at the Leopard Setup wizard. I realised that the restored Leopard partition had booted up instead of the internal disc. So, I unplugged the external drive, pressed reset on the iMac and was immediately greeted first by the reassuring chime, then by the Apple logo and a lingering grey screen and finally by a flashing dark folder icon with a question mark in the centre for eternity.
I tried rebooting a few more times. Same. I've been frantically Googling but only found the PRAM reset and a very frightening iMac disassembly guide. I've tried plugging the external drive back it, but it refuses to boot Leopard from that now. What can I do? I feel so helpless on a Mac, on a PC I'd at least be able to open the sucker up before panicking! I've been working on a client's flash web dev project for months, and not made a back up in about half that time. The website is supposed to be going live tomorrow! Luckily I have the site uploaded, but the entire source code is potentially lost, so in the long term this is a major catastrophe!
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Jul 11, 2009
My MacBook Pro will not boot up any more. It just suddenly happened. It turns on and comes up to the gray screen with the apple logo and then the circle progress icon comes up and spins.
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Jan 5, 2011
I've been reading this site for a while now, first time I'm posting. I recently purchased 8 GB of RAM for my 2010 13" MBP. There are two 4 GB DDR3 PC3-10500 1333mhz sticks. When I install them in the laptop my computer does not get past the apple logo boot screen (the spinning disc freezes). However, I can boot into Windows (boot camp) without issues.
Also, when I pair either of the 4 GB sticks with one of my old 2 GB stock sticks the laptop boots up fine in OS X. The system profiler registers it as 6 GB of 1067 mhz RAM (the stock sticks are 1067 mhz)
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Jul 12, 2006
I have a Rev A 12 inch Powerbook - 867 mHz, 640 RAM, 40 GB hard drive. The machine's always been reliable and has performed great over the years. I bought it the last week of July, 2003.
Yesterday, the Pbook was shut down, and I press the on button so it would boot up. Almost immediately, the hard drive makes a loud, whirring noise. The computer advances to the gray screen with the Apple logo, but it doesn't get past that point and the noise continues, as if it's a car engine that just won't start...
I'm going to take it to my local Apple Store in the morning, and hopefully the data, including my nearly 22 GB of music, can be saved. Any thoughts on how to get my computer working again? By the way, it's the original hard drive installed. Hopefully this is enough info to generate some ideas, I'm stumped.
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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.
Powerbook #1: Once in terminal I typed...
/sbin/fsck -fy
...response was...
disk0s10: I/O error.
Invalid Key Length
(4, 44890)
** Volume check failed
...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.
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Apr 22, 2012
My mother's unibody white MacBook will not get past the grey apple and spinning gear when you first boot up the computer. This was after she opened a link in an email from a friend who had her email compromised. Now I'm getting spam emails with the same link from my mother's hacked email, and her computer won't even get to the login screen. I took it to the genius bar only to be told it was likely HD failure, but the windows partition works without a hitch! What could this be? A trojan? Is there any way to retrieve data (really just pictures) before I attempt to reinstall OS X?
Info:
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Mar 19, 2009
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? Any way to fix it? Thanks.
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Apr 9, 2012
I deleted the entire vm folder and now my MacBook Pro won't get beyond the grey screen with the apple logo. I don't have any recovery discs with me. What can I do to rescue my MacBook Pro?
Info:MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.7)
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May 15, 2012
Mac book pro grey screen apple logo
Info:MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), iOS 5.1.1, Mac book pro opening with grscreen
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Mar 17, 2009
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).
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Nov 10, 2009
When i start the computer and the grey screen comes up with the apple logo etc., a grey "loading" bar has started appearing in the bottom of the screen. Takes a few minutes for it to go away. In the meantime the computer gets very hot and the fans are up to 6000 rpm. Then the os starts up, and I cannot download anything, due to the fact that it thinks my harddrive is full, though i have more than 100 gb of free space.I cant even download the 10.6.2 now due to the harddrive appears to be full
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Aug 16, 2010
Hoping someone can help - my imac (approx 15-18 months old , intel) won't start.
Last night on shutting down DPP (canon Digital image software) was hanging and system asked me if I wanted to force quit it...sadly I had switched off my bluetooth mouse and , as usually once mouse turned off switching it back on it never re connects - why did I buy the bletooth mouse and keyboard ?, so I could not confirm yes force quit - is there no way of selecting with keyboard like there is in windows ?
So I switched off at power switch. Tried to re switch on - grey screen came up, apple logo, the little timer circle but after a while timer circle stopped and nothing further happened.
have tried several more times and now don't even get timer.
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Dec 8, 2009
Well I have managed to get the g5 tower dual 2.5ghz to boot up to the grey screen with the apple logo then it shuts itself down.
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May 1, 2012
Macbook Pro was purchased in mid-late 2009 and is running on OS X 10.6. Today is suddenly stopped responding and so I turned it off. When I turned it back on it opend to the grey screen with the Apple logo and the loading icon and that is where it stayed. I have been searching for the answer on different forums but have yet to find a solution. My hard drive is appearing in the Disk Utility but not in the box when I try to reinstall OS X.
Info:MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.6)
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Nov 30, 2014
My computer died last night with each application not responding. I couldn't shut down normally so I held the power button to turn it off.
Next morning, I tried to boot the MacBook Pro and the boot process stalled at the grey screen with the Apple Logo and spinning wheel. I let it go for an hour and there was no change on the screen. Based on Apple's desk I ran Hardware diagnostics (extended with looping disabled) and got the following error
4HDD/11/40000000: SATA (0,0)
The screen shot is below
I ran this again with standard testing (no looping) and standard with looping and all gave the same results.
Info:
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
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Aug 29, 2009
Pretty smooth sailing until I had to reboot my mac pro. It just stops at the point where you have the grey Apple logo and the spinner.
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Nov 23, 2008
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?
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Nov 8, 2009
OSX 10.4.11 (Tiger) PPC G4 733 MHz
My Tiger volume gets stuck when starting up, it doesn't get further then the grey screen with the Apple logo. The clock with stripes keeps working but it doesn't get me to the blue screen.
For compatibility reasons concerning different softwares i use (Protools, Reason etc...) i keep changing the internal HD's for years now, thus changing the OS's (10.3.9, 10.4.11 etc). Never caused any problem.
When i boot from another 'master' volume (f.e. 10.3.9) OR from the OSX install CD, putting the Tiger volume as 'slave', in order to verify its disk permissions or the disk itself to be able to repair them, it's 'invisible', not 'seen' by the other volume.
So no 'verify disk permissions' nor Combo Update possible, maybe those things could solve my problem.
My cables are working perfectly: making the exact same connections and jumper settings with all my other volumes, is no problem at all: every volume is correctly seen by the others.
Also, there is no USB or external firewire device connected while trying to start up.
Remark: never had any problem with this Tiger volume, starting problem only occured yesterday AFTER installing Toast Titanium (which worked normally), shutting down and trying to start up again.
Nevertheless, some minor problems occured beforehand these last days: some apps didn't work anymore, like Safari, itunes, installer and UnrarX. But i don't know if it's linked.
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Mar 23, 2012
My power mac g5 has suddenly started to shut itself down in the early stages of boot up. The apple logo appears and the spinning timer logo spins befor a complete shut down.
I have used my o/s disc to access the disk utility. Repair disc is not an option. Verify disc is an option but this process fails due to " invalid nodes"
Info:
iPad 2, Mac OS X (10.5.8), G5 PPC 1.8ghz, iPhone4
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Jun 3, 2014
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.
Info:
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)
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May 8, 2012
unable to startup, it only shows the apple logo forever?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), It only shows the apple logo
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Aug 25, 2009
I am having trouble with my macbook: It wont load past the Grey apple start up screen with the spining gears, iv done Zapp on the PRAM, iv run ""/sbin/fsck -fy"". And I am now starting in Verbose mode, but its taking AGES, it must be loading for an hour now, its showing "Neb-computer /System/library/coreservices/loginwindow.app/contenst/MacOS/loginwindow: Login window Application started (Over and over and over again). I don't have an install disk.
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Jun 16, 2012
MacBook 10.6.8 startup goes to grey screen with apple, wheel and progress bar, and takes 5 minutes. This started only recently. What might be wrong?
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May 9, 2012
recently a friend of mine offered to update my 2009 MacBook to Mac osx Lion. when I received the computer back from him, it required a rather large update that has put my MacBook in a terrible state.
upon rebooting from the update, it froze at the grey Apple loading screen, and of course I thought nothing of it and gave it a little restart. Since then I cannot get it past the grey screen or the login window. it seems as though I cannot type in my password or click 'sleep' or any option the window gives me. I've been working on this issue all day, and I've tried countless things from the apple support community, with no avail.
I've tried clearing the cache, I've tried safe mode, I've tried the command+option+control+enter trick on the login page, I'm even trying to boot from the install disc my friend gave me...and it's just refusing to move past the grey screen.
Info:
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Dec 6, 2014
IT does this every time, but when I do command and r or other such keyboard commands, it goes I the recovery pahe with no problem. Whenever I tried erasing the iMac to reset it, it said the disk was locked.
Info:
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), April 2008 model
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Jan 10, 2011
I have a Macbook Pro 13 from the summer of 2009. After Christmas I decided to upgrade my hard drive and memory. This is what I got. [URL] For about a week everything seemed to work perfectly. I then began to have problems almost every day (finder crashing, etc). I reinstalled OSX probably 5 times using my previous account until finally did a clean wipe and reinstalled OSX again. It now seems to be working for the most part, but booting takes about two minutes. It gets stuck on the grey screen with the Apple logo with the turning gear for a couple of minutes before it boots. Normally it wouldn't bother me too much, but after the problems I was having before, I really wanted to make sure that there was no problem with my new hard drive or memory. After doing the usual suggestions for slow boot time (resetting PRAM, disconnecting external devices, repairing disk permissions, etc.) nothing changed. I booted into verbose mode and it seems to hang up for awhile before listing
disk0s2 i/o error
It does this twice before booting, hanging up for about a minute before giving the error. I am not sure if i should return it under warranty because I am not sure its broken. Like I said, it seems perfectly fine right now with the exception of the boot time. Using the Apple Hardware Check, even the extended check, didn't give any errors. The SMART status for the hard drive is verified. Is this clearly a hard drive issue, or could it be something else? Has anyone else had a similar problem?
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