10-10-2010, 12:39 PM

Hi there,

I have been busy with a issue for nearly two days and no progress.

Situation:
iMac 27' will not start up, it stays in the grey window with the grey logo.

What I tried:
I have the original Snowleopard dvd (not the one included to the mac, but the one that is a retail version, should work on all mac's!)

At first I wanted to do a clean install. To do so I simply inserted the disk, pressed "alt" and selected the OSX DVD, the dvd drive spinns up for about 20 sec, then goes quit and the screen remains grey with logo forever.

So I thought, maybe the dvd drive is screwed. I attached my MBP to the iMac selected the disk. First I formatted the disk and then I executed a install from my MacBookPro onto the 1TB HD from my iMac. After install I checked and all the files looked to be on the HD, system files, library, users etc etc......

I try to start up, again grey screen. So now I connect my MBP again by firewire 800 and start the iMac up in target mode, then, I restart my MacBookPro and hold alt to let it start up from a the iMac and I select the iMac HD as start up disk and it worked fine. Now I try the other way around.
I attached my MBP as Target disk and hold the "alt" key in while starting my iMac 27' it shows my MBP drive, I select it and it DOESNT start.

I tried also to reset the PRAM by restarting with alt and cmd +P+R untill I hear the Apple "Doing" 4 times.

Has anyone have any idea what might be the problem or where the problem lies. Unfortunately there is no more warranty on this machine.

PS: starting up with holding in the Shift key, the X key or the C key, all tried

Thanks for your help!

Dariusz

10-10-2010, 12:46 PM

Where are the discs that shipped with your iMac? You need those.

The SL retail disc likely does not have the drivers that would be required for that machine since it should have shipped with SL and there would be no reason for Apple to include them on the retail disc.

Every 27" iMac is still under the initial one year warranty for at least another few days as they were not introduced until Oct. 20, 2009.

10-13-2010, 01:26 PM

Could very well be a RAM issue, that would definitely cause you not to be able to boot, even in target disk mode. Have you upgraded or messed with the ram at all recently? If so, might be worth removing a simm or two to see what happens. All else fails, time for a trip to the Apple Store.