12-26-2010, 12:01 PM

I have a 14" Imac that is about 3 years old. I've never had a problem with it before. A few days ago, after i took it out of sleep mode, the screen was frozen (unresponsive to mouse, clicking, keyboard, etc), so I turned it off by pushing the button on the back bottom left corner. When i tried to turn it back on, it played the startup noise and then showed a grey screen for about a minute and then displayed a blinking folder with a question mark on it. I've attempted rebooting it several times but it always gives me the same response. can someone please help?

12-26-2010, 02:14 PM

Can you boot from the install disks and run Disk Utility? I would try that first, as it could be a failing hard drive. When you run Disk Utility you want to verify and repair the drive.

12-26-2010, 03:30 PM

just tried the disk utility - the "repair disk permissions" option is unavailable for the Mac OS X Install disc 1. But i tried the verify permissions option and it says: "Error: The underlying ask reported failure on exit."
two questions: what does this mean?
and am i using the right disc?

sorry. I'm a bit technologically impaired. I appreciate your help though!!

12-26-2010, 03:38 PM

Originally Posted by nataliesullivan

I have a 14" Imac that is about 3 years old.

Just so there's no confusion...I do not think that you have a 14"...3 year-old iMac. Even the original CRT iMacs from 11 years ago were considered 15" iMacs (although the display was actually 13.8" diagonally).

The smallest display offered in an iMac in the last 3 years was a 17" LCD display. So if you have a "14" display on your iMac...it's definitely older than 3 years.

- Nick

12-26-2010, 03:46 PM

oh. all i know is that it's the smaller one of the two that were offered to me when i bought it. would the size affect the performance/the problem i'm having?

I've also just tried to reboot in single-user mode so that i can use fsck and it wont let me.