04-02-2009, 09:44 AM

Out of the blue, when we turned on the machine, we got a screen that was totally white. I tried turning it on and off, turning it on while holding down several keys on the keyboard (this is what the apple rep said to do), and even unplugging it for a while. No dice - still a white screen. Can't even re-install OSx.

We first thought it was the hard drive (this thought was born of experience; we lost our first hard drive about a year ago and had the same type of screen). However, after taking it to the apple store, we found out that it was not the hard drive, but something else. In order to find out what that "something else" was, we would need to shell out at least $700 to troubleshoot it. Result: we came home with a new iMac with the data from the old hard drive transferred to the new one. Bummer (though we were contemplating purchasing an additional computer anyway).

It it were a PC, I'd be a little more confident about opening her up to do a little surgery, but I've never cracked the case of a mac, so I'm not sure I'd be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

04-02-2009, 10:19 AM

Hold the shift key when booting, see if you can get in in safe mode.