booting problems

[leighbooth]

So I'll start at the beginning....

Imac been running a bit sluggish - so I installed 'Main Menu' and did some cleaning. I got a bit carried away performing all the tasks and the one I mostly regret performing was rebuilding spotlight.

This was taking ages, and my Mac was running SUPER SLOW, and it said 61 hours to go - and I was worried that it was stuck and not actually rebuilding. I looked on the forums and someone suggested, restarting in safe mode to get it moving again.

SO, I tried safemode - by pressing s on restart - NOTHING, wouldn't boot, so I turned off the power and tried to start normally - same problem. I then thought to put in my Snow Leopard disk and pressing c, BUT now the wireless keyboard won't work.

I have had a grey screen with apple and spinning cog for an hour.

I have a spare Macbook, which I am on right now, and a firewire cable - but I can't seem to use the wireless keyboard.

If anyone knows anything I can try - I would be eternally grateful

Thanks

Leigh

 

[Detrius]

It sounds like you have a bad hard drive. Boot the iMac into target disk mode by holding down the T key. You may be able to get the data off via FireWire.

Holding down the "s" key on boot does nothing. Holding down shift is safe boot. Holding down command-s is single user mode. Holding down command-v is verbose mode and will show you what's going on behind that spinning gear.

Get a keyboard that connects via USB.