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Blue screen and safeboot issues

G

Gandhi CPFC

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 31, 2014
5
0
Hello,

I've had my iMac for a good two years or so. I hadn't used it in a few months until today and that's when I ran into a problem.
When I pressed the on button, it took a while to load. After this is got a grey screen with the apple logo on it then after a while it turned blue.
I have done a bit of research on it and everyone says that I have to safe-boot by holding "shift" when the computer turns on. When I do hold the "shift" key, I have the same outcome as before (the grey screen then the blue screen.)

I'm not too sure if this is the right place to post this thread but if anyone could help me I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Gandhi
 
Gandhi CPFC said:
Hello,

I've had my iMac for a good two years or so. I hadn't used it in a few months until today and that's when I ran into a problem.
When I pressed the on button, it took a while to load. After this is got a grey screen with the apple logo on it then after a while it turned blue.
I have done a bit of research on it and everyone says that I have to safe-boot by holding "shift" when the computer turns on. When I do hold the "shift" key, I have the same outcome as before (the grey screen then the blue screen.)

I'm not too sure if this is the right place to post this thread but if anyone could help me I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Gandhi
Click to expand...

Hello Ghandi,

Please take the time to post this in the iMac sub-forum! I think you'll get a quicker respons there.

~ Cheers
 
Gandhi CPFC said:
Hello,

I've had my iMac for a good two years or so. I hadn't used it in a few months until today and that's when I ran into a problem.
When I pressed the on button, it took a while to load. After this is got a grey screen with the apple logo on it then after a while it turned blue.
I have done a bit of research on it and everyone says that I have to safe-boot by holding "shift" when the computer turns on. When I do hold the "shift" key, I have the same outcome as before (the grey screen then the blue screen.)

I'm not too sure if this is the right place to post this thread but if anyone could help me I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Gandhi
Click to expand...

It is really hard to trouble shoot something like this when the machine won't even start to try and test anything. It could be anything from just a bad hard drive to a completely failed logic board.

Do you have happen to have any kind of bootable backup or a recovery USB key you could try and option key boot to? If it boots to that, that would point to a bad internal drive. If it won't even boot to an external USB key, that points to more serious issues like a logic board.
 
Typo

Sorry,
I didn't realise that I was typing "iMac"
As you can see, I clearly haven't used this device in a while.
Would it help if I supplied a video of what happens when the device boots?
 
Gandhi CPFC said:
Sorry,
I didn't realise that I was typing "iMac"
As you can see, I clearly haven't used this device in a while.
Would it help if I supplied a video of what happens when the device boots?
Click to expand...

Video won't help. I am familiar with what you are seeing and it is not something that could be fixed by any trick or Terminal command or anything we can give you here. You likely have a hardware failure of some sort that is going to need to be fixed by Apple. :(
 
Two things:

1. Is just updating that OS using a disk out of the picture?

2. Would me using a wireless keyboard effect the fact that I cannot enter single user mode or safe mode?
 
Gandhi CPFC said:
Two things:

1. Is just updating that OS using a disk out of the picture?

2. Would me using a wireless keyboard effect the fact that I cannot enter single user mode or safe mode?
Click to expand...

1. If you are just using your computer and it just starts acting up like this without you having installed anything odd that messed things up, an OS install will do nothing. With what you have now, I doubt you would even be able to see the internal disk to reinstall the OS anyway. One think you could try like I mentioned is seeing if you can boot from an external disk. That would eliminate the internal drive as the issue.

2. Nah... sounds like it is not wanting to boot at all.
 
At one point I did attempt to download an illegitimate version of an OS then after the update I didn't use my Mac for a while. Could this be the cause?
 
Gandhi CPFC said:
At one point I did attempt to download an illegitimate version of an OS then after the update I didn't use my Mac for a while. Could this be the cause?
Click to expand...

If it worked fine after you installed that, then the started later, I doubt that is the cause. What yo are describing here sounds more like a hardware failure than anything to do with the OS or software.
 
Gandhi CPFC said:
Ah.

How much would a logic board cost these days?
Click to expand...

Around $300-400. You really should take it to Apple to get it checked out though. I would hate to see you spend money on a logic board then it turns out to be some other hardware issue.

How old is the iMac? Is it even worth fixing?

I know people will buy these on eBay even not working for the parts, so maybe you can recover some money that way.
 
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