Imac 24" Alum trouble booting, help!

[zeroeffect]

Hey guys, I have a 24" core 2 duo 2007-08 Alum Imac with 4 gb memory. I am having trouble getting it to start. Last week it woke from sleep and was locked up, tried restarting just hung at the apple gray screen endlessly loading. Checked extended hardware testing nothing found. Finally got it to boot using the OSX install disc.

Then last night it acted up again, just using Safari locked up with spinning beachball. Tried restarting countless times no luck this time after awhile at the gray screen a crossed out circle showed up. Did the extended test again, nothing found. Would not boot from OSX disc either. Unplugged for the entire night. This morning I could only get it to boot with the OSX install disc and everything is fine.

It seems like it won't boot from a wake or restart but once you get it going it will work until it either locks up or has to restart.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Then last night it acted up again, just using Safari locked up with spinning beachball. Tried restarting countless times no luck this time after awhile at the gray screen a crossed out circle showed up. Did the extended test again, nothing found. Would not boot from OSX disc either. Unplugged for the entire night. This morning I could only get it to boot with the OSX install disc and everything is fine."

If you've got anything on the hard drive that's important to you, now would be a very good time to think about getting it backed up, if you haven't already done so.

If you can get it to boot from the OSX install disc, try getting to Disk Utility and see what kind of "SMART" status report DU gives you.

Also, if you can get that far, try the "Repair disk" option there, and also try a permissions repair.

 

[skinny*k]

Sounds like a corrupted file or disk...

First:
If you haven't been backing up, back up any files (to cd or dvd) of value since before you began having problems—try not to save or create anything new.

Then:
Boot from your install dvd and run Disk Utility; if the disk is okay, or is repaired by Disk utility, you have a corrupted file, and the easiest (?) solution is to re-install the OS. Keep in mind that Disk Utility isn't always right; the drive might have an intermittent problem.

With the age of your iMac, there's a fair chance that your drive is failing.

Hope this helps,
Good luck,
skinny*k

 

[zeroeffect]

Since the problem I have been backing up via Time Machine, I was thinking of replacing the HD. I have a 1 TB WD caviar green here. Can I then reinstall OSX and then use time machine to get all my files back?

 

[zeroeffect]

I repaired permissions and then did a verify disk and it said that my HD is corrupt and needs to be repaired.

So I need to re-install OSX? I am also running snow leopard. So would the process be OSX install discs, snow leopard install, and then restore via Time Machine?

 

[zeroeffect]

Ok guys I booted from the OSX disc repaired the disc and verified it everything was cool.

I restarted without the OSX disc fine. Surfed Safari for a minute. Checked DU one more time now its says the sibling link is bad to repair disk. Is this really a bad HD? Should I just go ahead and replace it?

Its also giving me a spinning beachball intermittently while I type this.

 

[Fishrrman]

"I restarted without the OSX disc fine. Surfed Safari for a minute. Checked DU one more time now its says the sibling link is bad to repair disk. Is this really a bad HD? Should I just go ahead and replace it?"

Here's what I would do before I decided that there was a "hardware problem" with the internal drive:

1. Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to "clone" the contents of the hard drive to a backup drive. I would NOT use Time Machine for this, because TM backups aren't bootable and they aren't in "finder format". I would _prefer_ CCC because if it encounters a corrupted file during the duping process, it doesn't abort the dupe, it just keeps on copying whatever it can. SD may choke if it encounters a bad file during backup.

2. I would then TEST the clone by booting from it at least once or twice. I would "check around" the cloned backup to be sure everything I wanted was there and it looked the way I expected my main drive to look.

3. Next, I would boot from the clone, and use Disk Utility to re-initialize the internal hard drive. I would then run DU's "repair disk" routine at least a couple of times, to make sure it views the newly-reinitialized drive as ok.

4. Then, I would use CCC to "re-clone" the contents of the backup drive _back to_ the original internal drive.

If I continued to get errors after doing this, to me it would indicate:
- Corrupted software (in that case, re-install clean copies of the offending apps)
- Failing drive (replace drive)