iMac display gone wonky and doesnt load

[slippyjim]

Hi,

My sister knocked her iMac off the desk and now its behaving a bit odd...
A1419 EMC 2639
iMac 27" Late 2013 model
There is no visible damage to the screen or any part of the iMac
She has many unbacked up photos on this Mac.

When she turned it on it displayed a screen like this and wouldnt go any further and it also did not do the startup chime.
It looks to me like its the Apple logo and the progress bar gone all squiggly.

I then turned it on at my house and I got the same screen and no startup chime but then it did go on to a screen displaying

"Unapproved Caller.
SecurityAgent may only be invoked by Apple Software"

The screen was perfect with no cracks, lines or any other distortion.

I clicked Ok and it straightaway took me back to the same screen, I clicked OK again and this time it took longer - around 4 or 5seconds and then back to the same screen. This always happens

Then I tried resetting the NVRAM and as I was doing that the startup chime returned but still same initial screen

Then I tried recovery and that loads fine, screen again perfectly fine.
I ran a "repair disk" and it said it was ok, it didnt take very long at all
Then I tried repair disk permissions, it found some errors so i thought I would try repair disk again but this time it said it couldn't unmount the disk.

Any ideas on what could be the problem and how to proceed from here?

Thanks

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

My guess:
1. The iMac is using a HDD (spinning disk)
2. Your sister knocked it down when it's running.
3. And now a critical part of the data on the HDD is not readable, leading to OS being unable to load.

If my guess above is correct, then the proper solution maybe:
1. Turn the iMac off. Unplug it from the power source.
2. Take the iMac to a repair service and as them to replace the HDD with an SSD.
3. Re-install Mac OS with the new SSD.
4. Take the half-broken HDD to a data recovery service and try to recover as much data as you can.

 

[slippyjim]

urrrggghhhh I was wondering if this was the case but was hoping it wasnt
Is it possible to copy files from the HDD from the recovery mode?

Thanks

 

[chscag]

urrrggghhhh I was wondering if this was the case but was hoping it wasnt
Is it possible to copy files from the HDD from the recovery mode?

Thanks

See the answer in the other forum where you posted the same thread.

 

[slippyjim]

Got to try everywhere

 

[rpmurray]

Hope that wasn't a Fusion drive.