stuck at the grey apple logo screen

[thejakemer]

I just got one of the newest Mac Minis open box. I brought it home and it worked for a few hours. I restarted it and now the only thing that happens is that I get the grey apple logo screen with the spinning disk.

I put the Snow Leopard disk in so I could reformat the drive. I go through the process of holding the C button down when it boots and it still only goes to that grey loading screen instead of going to the disk menu like it should be doing.

i've tried following the other threads that i have seen, but it looks like the other threads are dealing with older versions of OSX and their processes haven't been working. is there anything else that i could do to get this thing booted up again?

 

[philipma1957]

open box from what seller?

 

[Cave Man]

1. Try booting in safe mode (hold the shift key down when you power on). If it boots, repair permissions with Disk Utility.

2. You don't use the 'c' key anymore for booting from the DVD. Instead, press and hold the Option key until you are prompted for bootable volumes. Again, use Disk Utility to repair permissions before trying a reinstallation. Disk Utility is available from the menu bar after you enter the language selection.

 

[Hellhammer]

http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_doesn't_boot

 

[thejakemer]

thank to everyone who has replied thus far. i ended up getting my macbook pro cloned onto the mac mini HDD. now i want to reformat the computer completely and start from scratch. so i put the snow leopard disk in, restart the computer and choose the option to boot from the disk, but now it goes through and just stops on a dark grey screen that says "Your computer needs to be restarted. Press and hold the power button...blah blah blah".

this happens no matter what snow leopard disk i put in (i happen to have two. don't know why). anybody know how to get around this portion?

 

[Hellhammer]

thank to everyone who has replied thus far. i ended up getting my macbook pro cloned onto the mac mini HDD. now i want to reformat the computer completely and start from scratch. so i put the snow leopard disk in, restart the computer and choose the option to boot from the disk, but now it goes through and just stops on a dark grey screen that says "Your computer needs to be restarted. Press and hold the power button...blah blah blah".

this happens no matter what snow leopard disk i put in (i happen to have two. don't know why). anybody know how to get around this portion?

Have you tried the steps listed in the link I posted above?

 

[QuarterSwede]

Sounds like a bad HDD. My father had an issue with the installation DVD not booting and throwing up kernel panics when his HDD was bad in his iMac.

 

[thejakemer]

i did try the steps above. those helped me through my first problem where it wouldn't boot up at all. now i am getting that damn "restart your mac" thing and don't know how to get it solved.

and i was thinking that it's a bad HDD too. i remember having an issue similar to this before with a mac air and we had to swap out the drive. damn it

 

[Detrius]

2. You don't use the 'c' key anymore for booting from the DVD. Instead, press and hold the Option key until you are prompted for bootable volumes.

That's not true. The "c" key still works fine. The option key also works fine.

 

[Cave Man]

That's not true. The "c" key still works fine. The option key also works fine.

I didnt' say it won't work, just that the Option key is better because it looks for all bootable volumes.