09-27-2008, 01:55 PM

Running Leopard on iMac-- booted my computer up this morning and it got stuck on the grey apple screen for 7-8 minutes, so I tried restarting. Same thing. Finally, I let it sit for about 15 minutes and it finally got to the blue screen. I let it sit for another 5 minutes and the desktop came up, but everything is running ridiculously slow.

Called Apple - they had me clear my cache. Didn't help. Then they had me do a PRAM reset. Didn't help. Ran disc utility and it took 3 hours and came back with tons of errors, some it said it wouldn't fix. Apple told me to run disc utility again after that -- so I am now in the process of running it again and it looks like the same errors are coming up.

Any ideas? I have never had a problem before but this one seems critical.

09-27-2008, 02:19 PM

Did you boot from the OSX DVD and run Disk Utility from the tools menu there? A lot of issues can not be repaired while the drive is mounted, and booting with the DVD takes care of that issue and things can be repaired.

09-27-2008, 02:27 PM

No, I'm not sure why Apple didn't suggest that, but I will call back and ask them if that should be the next step.

Thanks

09-27-2008, 03:06 PM

Originally Posted by RobW

No, I'm not sure why Apple didn't suggest that, but I will call back and ask them if that should be the next step.

Thanks

Just try it - it'll either work or it won't!

09-27-2008, 03:15 PM

Will do - I read somewhere that you have to hold 'C' down during the boot-up to get it to boot from the install disc. Is that correct?

09-27-2008, 03:48 PM

yes C key boots from the install cd/dvd...

09-27-2008, 06:32 PM

And then look for Utilities>Disk Utility>Repair Disk. The problem is you cannot repair a disk you are booted from.

01-19-2009, 08:04 PM

Just wanted to follow up with this thread. Turns out that I ended up taking the computer to the Genius Bar and they got it running (for about 2 weeks) and it started to happen again. At that point I became worried, so I bought a portable drive and backed up everything with Time Machine. After it finished (it took about six hours for less than 80 gig), I re-booted and the computer wouldn't even get to the grey Apple screen before shutting itself down - i tried this at least a dozen times with the same result.

All along I was dealing with a failing HD (even though Disk Utilities said everything was okay) and backing up the drive was the straw that broke the camel's back because of all of the work it had to do to back up the drive. Thankfully, after Apple replaced the drive, I was able to restore my entire system and all data because Time Machine saved everything. By the way, I think Time Machine took so long because of the failing drive because when I backed it up on a new, more permanent solution for the first time it only took about 45 minutes.

Bottom line - I was very fortunate to be able to save my data - I learned my lesson about backing up.