IMac :: Grey Screen Of Death Appearing Occasionally?
Jan 8, 2010
This has been going on for a while. It happened first a month or so ago.
I turn on my 2008 iMac 24". The screen turns white like always, but no Apple icon appears. It starts to make a loud nice again and again. Bip, Bip. Pause. Bip, Bip, Pause. Bip, Bip. Pause.
I turn it off. Turn it on again. Same thing happens. Repeat.
I take out the cable powering the computer and go to school. I put it back in when i returned and turned the computer on. It worked fine.
Nothing happened again until a week after. I was sitting working on the computer, when it out of nowhere shows the "grey screen of death". I turn off the computer, take out the cable, leave it out for half and hour or so, then turn the computer on. It works fine. Works for a week. Same thing happens again.
Now it starting to appear more often tht though, and I'm afraid to turn it on until i get an external HD so i can Time Machine, in case it will appear more often for every time i turn it on.
The guarantee is not valid anymore (never purchased AppleCare) and i can't bring it to a store and show them what it does, because it doesn't always happen.
I read that it might a kernel panic somethingsomething, and that i need to wipe the HD. Though that was when the computer had the grey screen all the time. Not just occasionally like on mine.
I am currently stuck on the grey screen of death with the flashing ? file folder.I have tried resetting the pram etc. and when i boot from my snow leopard disk the disk utility does not recognize my HD. Is there anything else I can do to fix this? Or try?
About two weeks ago I'm using my snow leopard partition of my macbook pro and browsing the internet via firefox. My mouse freezes for a second, and then my computer just shuts down. I power back up my macbook pro to find a 'cancel or prohibitory symbol'. Strange thing is I can hold down option and boot into my windows partition no problem I go through all the motions suggested by the apple website, such as resetting the PRAM etc.. Nothing works. Flash forward to today. I finally get a hold of my snow leopard installation disc and boot my macbook with it. I run the disk utility and it finds that my hard drive's good to go.
I read online and it seems that the best option would be to install snow leopard again. I decide install it again, but about halfway through the installation, the installation fails and pretty much freezes. I had to shut down the macbook via the power button. Now, whenever I try to boot up my macbook I hear the chime, but nothing happens after that. I am just left with a grey screen. I cannot enter safe mode, single user mode, and when I try to choose the start up disk by holding down option, the arrow pops up to choose which disk to pick, but there are no disks to choose from.
just posting for some basic advice, or technical help.... I keep getting a grey screen of death its happened 3 times in the past 2 weeks, the computer resets ok and then works fine for a while .... but i don't know whats going on ... or how to check for any problems ? ? I never had this problem before, I have discovered a small dent in my rear cover near the CD drive slot, I dont know when this has occured, maybe recently ... but its minor... almost invisible ... the laptop hasn't been dropped or anything like that and I assume its happened whilst in my bag so no serious shock .... ..I don't know if this has any bearing on anything �I got a report and have posted it below : it says its processor ? ?Tbh Ive found this laptop to be very slow on certain things since I have had it, esp when launching finder �. or the dashboard, it take forever to fill in the information and finder takes ages to fill in the mb in each folder or to load the app icons and often crashes , which Iwouldnt expect with a I7 ... but this has been like it since the start so assumed it a osx bug ..., can anyone suggest anything ? ? or what i should do, i dont want this happening in the middle of working on a video project etc .
I've had my iMac, 27" 3.4 Ghz i7 16GB, since Jan 2012. From my excitement of having 2TB, I put all my info from every hard-drive ever owned on it, deleting the originals with the faith that I can trust it till I purchase a 2TB external for the backup.
Two months later it crashed showing the 'grey screen of death' and got stuck with every restart on the welcome-screen (grey apple logo with the circuling loading graphic underneath) only with a new loading bar in below them. The service center claimed the HD crashed, and replaced it (and it took me more than a month going around finding a place that would recover the data before they could replace the HD)
I finally receive it after a long period of living on this earth without a computer (which is problematic for a freelancing graphic designer) and 4 days later crashes again the same exact way, this time the service center claimed it was a software problem but got it fixed.
I've received it yesterday again and I only downloaded trusted software (VLC, DIVx...) and did not dare transfer any old data and stuck to only surfing the net catch up to what life I've been missing out on. It is still crashing but restarting fixing it.
The only thing common with all 11 'crashings' is safari was open, and I really doubt and do hope that it's not the problem.
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...
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.
So I encountered the grey screen with the spinning wheel 2 days ago. I am using a MacBook Pro (Late 2011), I bought it only 2 months ago. I have tried to reset PRAM, booting the computer with; shift, command v, option, command r, command s, and re-installing Lion from Disk Utility. My last and only way out of this seems to be a reformating of the Hard Drive
We own a very old model macbook and the startup screen appears as grey and an icon appears in the shape of a file with a question mark in the middle and the startup does not proceed from there.
Every few weeks my iMac will suddenly freeze, the screen going black or white or pink etc. The only way I can get the computer back is to hold down the power button to force a shutdown. Then after a restart everything is OK for a few more weeks. Usually it occurs when I am on the internet. I click on something and suddenly the computer is frozen. I am on OS X 10.6.8 and usually use Safari. Ironically when I opened this forum 5 minutes ago there was a similar sounding problem at the top of the list!
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), FCE 4 + FCS 3 . . . Little Knowledge, Many Opinions.
I have a G5 that developed a fault where half the screen is grey . It does this on starting up and stays this way. My eyes feel like there bleeding from hours of starring at screen and reading text to no avail. I am of limited funds so a send away for repairs is probably going to be beyond my means.
hopefully will be able to get some info on here as to what's up with my iMac. Over the last day or so I noticed my screen looking dirty, and have just left it. I went to clean it today and noticed that the "dirt" is under the glass, and on the lcd itself. The only way I can describe it is if you were to burn a candle with a bit of glass behind it, the glass would get like a grey/black residue on it, that's what it looks like. But, the problem is, it isn't uniform, it is in blotches, and it actually looks kinda like fingerprints. Like if you were to put your finger on the glass of the candle, it would take away the residue and leave an oval clean spot? That is just at the top left of the LCD, at the top right, it looks more like dirty water marks on the LCD it's self, again, the same colour.
It is only in the top half of the LCD I am noticing this problem. I wouldn't say it is yellowing, but is this a common problem with iMac LCDs?
I'm currently looking for the charger for my camera, but I'm not even sure if that will show it. My iMac is only 2 months old, if that, and I'm worried as to what might be the cause. Does anyone have any idea what could have caused this?
My screen has gone to a very dark grey on startup. I can faintly make out the desktop icons, but it is about 98% black. Everything else seems to be fuctioning. iMac G417" Flat Panel 17" [Pixar-lamp style] OS 10.4
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.
24" imac. leopard system. the system was frozen (which was the first time in two years) a couple of days ago, so i turned the power off to reboot the system. then it's stuck at the grey screen. to make it worse, i have a dvd inserted in the drive. please tell me what seems to be the problem and how to solve it.
My IMAC will not boot up. It was working fine this morning and I was working away then suddenly a MUSIC file wouldnt play, so I restarted the computer, and this is what happens now...It starts out like normal but after a period of showing me the APPLE logo it goes to the "NO" symbol. url...
iMac os x Mavericks 10.9.3. I tried to boot up yesterday morning after completely shutting dwn the night before. Stays on grey screen with Apple logo. I tried safe mode, no luck, will not boot up in safe mode. I tried backing up to external hard drive from utilities, but it stopped and said something like couldn't perform function... I never used or set up Time Machine.
Not sure exactly when it started but I noticed it about half an hour ago and have come straight online to 'troubleshoot' the problem. The is a grey smudge/shadow in the middle of my screen and I am unable to remove it by cleaning the screen or restarting my computer. I have seen similar issues posted with no resolve so I don't know if people discovered a fix or just gave in and took the computer into the Apple store. With no way to transport the computer safely into the city centre, I would like to avoid doing that if at all possible.
Info: iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10)
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!
My Mum has just turned on our family computer- an iMac G5, 1.9ghz 17" (first model with built in iSight).
It gets to the grey screen with the apple, with the loading icon below it, then after about a minute the fans turn out pretty loudly, and it goes no further, just stays on the grey screen.
I shut down my imac and when I went to restart it, I can't get it to get past the grey screen.I can't even get to the apple screen.I have unplugged everything and nothing works.
Got my 24" 2.4GHz iMac on release last year, with Tiger. Installed Leopard on it on release day.
The problem I have is that ever since a botched Boot Camp installation I've had endless problems with certain applications hanging during their startup (notably Image Capture) or refusing to quit (notably iTunes). Force Quit doesn't resolve these issues. Restarting doesn't work because Force Quit can't quit them so I have to pull the plug or otherwise force a shutdown.
Upon restarting I either get the grey screen that instantly appears, or, if I've pulled the plug and left it for a few minutes I can get to the Apple symbol but no spinner or any further start up action. Occasionally I get lucky, get back up and running, and all is well until the next crash.
All this started happening when I decided to try installing Windows on Boot Camp again. I've had it on here a couple of times since Leopard was released but usually end up deleting it eventually because either the Windows installation gets bogged down or I get bored with it and never use it. Anyway, this time, using the same discs I've always used (and yes, it's SP2, so it should be fine and anyway it's worked at least twice before) when I got to the 'restart to continue installing Windows' bit, I got the white screen and nothing happened. After an hour or so of praying and restarting endlessly trying to get a response, I finally got it to recognise my OSX installation and was up and running again. The Boot Camp volume didn't appear to be there and Disk Utility revealed zero problems whatsoever. Everything looked fine until these recurring hangs, refusals to quit apps and screwed up start-ups.
Any ideas? I don't have the expensive Apple support, but it's less than a year old! Of course, I realise that this means nothing to Apple, who seem to think I should pay a premium in order to have my machine warrantied by them for more than 90 days. Grr...
If I get it up and running I'm thinking I should just wipe the ENTIRE system absolutely clean and re-install Leopard and then use my Time Machine backup to put all my data back on (pricelessly valuable as I use the machine to work on my photography with), but I'm concerned that if there's a flaw in the System somewhere, a corruption, that installing the Time Machine backup will just reintroduce the error. On the other hand, if it's a deeply embedded and invisinle partition corruption from the bad Boot Camp installation attempt, that should be fixed by wiping the entire drive to reinstall Leopard, right?
New iMac is stuck on grey apple screen after startup. It is a 3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5 running OS 10.9.4. The problem occurred after a migration from my older 2009 iMac which is running Snow Leopard 10.6.6. When the restart occurred from Migration Assistant, the new computer will not boot up to the login screen. Disk utility did not solve problem.
Info: iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
I've got two iMacs in my posession currently from getting replacement machines. Both have screen issues as follows: iMac A - dead & stuck pixels, feint grey horizontal bar running along bottom portion of screen, bottom left corner has noticeable backlight bleed. iMac B - dead & stuck pixels, yellow tinge in bottom portion of screen. So here are my questions. Which iMac should I keep and submit for repair? (does it matter and why or why not?) How does the actual repair get done? For example, if I submit iMac B for repair, could I end up with a grey bar or backlight prob like in iMac A?
Are there multiple layers to the display when they fix specific issues? For example, let's say the dead pixels are on one layer while the yellow tinge is on a different layer, or are both issues on the same layer? I ask because if there are two or more separate layers, there is more of a chance to mess up so I may want to submit the iMac that has the least amount of issues.
Lastly and most importantly, has anyone submitted their iMac for screen repair for these issues and got it back 100% repaired? (no dead/stuck pixels, yellowing, grey bar, backlght bleed) These are #4 and #5 in terms of the number of replacements I've gotten now and I'm sick of it so I may opt to go for repair on either of these existing machines instead of going for replacement #6. But do you think a 6th replacement would be better than going for repair on either of these? Or not?
I have a HITACHI touro desk 3TB external hard dive connected to my iMac OS X version 10.6.8 Every time i start up the system it stays on a grey screen until I unplug the usb of the external hard drive then the system boots up normally. I have tried connecting different usb cables, plug in to different usb ports, and nothing works. I have other external hard drives and they don't give me any problems. is a pain plugging and unplugging the usb cable.
I have a Macbook Air that is about 2 years old. Recently, the backlight started to go off randomly, it always lasts for less than a second and then is back to normal.
I have a black macbook that I got in Dec 2007. While I am using it, the screen will randomly going completely black and I have to move towards being closed until the screen works again. I think it is a short in the screen but I am not sure.
I was hoping someone else has had a similar problem and figured out how to fix it. I was also thinking about taking it into Apple or an Apple reseller to get it looked at but I am not sure how expensive it would be.
