sick apple -apple logo on grey screen- help!

contact23

my apple imac 17 inch flat screen(2002)--has gone on strike with grey screen and the greyer apple logo in the center the machine just wont boot up, i have tried the hardware test cd starting via hold down the c key, and restarted holding down the option key nothing seems to work can anyone suggest a different restart tecnique?

babypink

first thing i'd do is to zap the PRAM.....hold cmd+alt+p+r while booting and keep it held til you hear the startup sound about 5 times. hopefully this'll do the trick.

Otherwise try booting into single user mode: cmd+s on startup
once there(if there) enter: fsck -fy
enter: reboot

it may be a matter of repairing the permissions which the above should do for you


let us know how u get on

contact23

thanks for the tip babypink, i tried the two suggestions, got the sound bits but then the grey screen reappears......and nothing,,,do you possibly have any other tricks to show me ... I would appriciate it

Gordon

You don't have another machine do you? If so you could startup in target disk mode by pressing T on startup and using firewire connection between the machines. Then you could have a gander inside the disk and do some checks.

babypink

1) hold cmd+v on startup to boot in verbose mode. this'll list everything the OS is doing as its loading...you should be able to see then what its stuck on....should give a good idea how to proceed

2) hold shift on startup to try booting into safe mode. if this works its something to do with ancillary startup extension

Gordon makes a good point too actually

contact23

well i have hooked up a powerbook to the imac and restarted in t mode, nice one gordon , i saw the files i wanted hit the panic button shoved in a pen drive to extract them and since then all i got is a spinning ball,so .. I also tried the restart i v mode .. thanks babypink , but no joy there either. i suppose if i wait long enough the spinning ball will go , but my powerbook is on a 30 minute run as there is a problem with its cooling system...another story!! --- so i can only wait so long-- before the PB slows right down.


I may borrow someone else mac, though i know of nobody who would risk it given my current run of luck.


thanks for the advice , thanks to both of you! i think im on the rite track. will post progress

Gordon

Not sure if this will do anything but everything is worth trying: while you're in target disk mode open up Disk Utility from the Applications-Utilities folder and you may be able to repair permissions on the disk. Failing that you could at least do a repair disk.

contact23

to conclude the story, I tried all suggestions and reluctantly rang apple support, who guided me thru to a reinstall!!!


, unfortunatly there was not enough space on the hard drive to archive and install so i got stuck with a clean install all data dumped!!


thanks anyway

babypink

sorry didn't work out fully! ah well fresh computer though

Gordon

F*cks sakes. Sorry to hear that. If your data is quite important to you you could try TechTool Pro to recover the data? Although maybe others here can suggest a better program that would recover data from a completely erased disk & reinstall?