iMac won't boot completely?

This happened a couple of times last week. The machine is in sleep mode, and I tap the space bar and she usually boots instantly. It wouldn't boot past a blank blue screen, so I shut down manually and pulled the power cord. Waited 30 seconds, plugged it back in and then it booted from sleep fine.

This morning (after a week of no problems) it's doing it again but now the power-down, unplug, wait, replug, boot just gets me back to the blue screen. I can hear stuff going on inside sounds like the HDD is being ramped up or accessed and then nothing. I put a blank CD in and was able to eject it with the eject button on the keyboard. But still no boot.

I do not have any other Macs so I'm kind of in a quandary here. Any ideas on how to get her back to normal?

Specs are below in my signature. Nothing new in the way of software in the past week either. By googling I see that its not just me... seems to happena lot to macs. Is it hardware or software derived though?

Mike

That has not happened to me. In order I would do Permissions, disk verify and then apply the last combo updater as a precaution. Something is up and you have work to do.

I stopped at the Apple store yesterday and they suggested that I do the memory reset keyboard sequence, if that doesn't work then consider a archive/install with the OEM CD, and if that doesn't work... bring it in. Of course, I got home touched the button and it was on instantly. Has been fine since.

Can you explain the Permissions, disk verify, and combo updater process a little better? Might be worth trying.

When the iMac24 under Tiger started to act odd, I head for the same routine. Under Leopard all the following still work but i just upgraded when the 10.5.2 came out.

- Try Repairing Permissions - Applications>Utility>Disk Utility>Repair Permissions (usually fixes many small issues)
- if still flakey Disk Utility>Verify Disk then Repair Disk* if it says something is "odd" (this will tell you the drive is at low risk of failure in the near future)
- if still flakey I backup and would first download the last combo updater (10.5.2) from Apple and re apply it. Failing that I would do an Archive and Install (drastic)[I also have the combo updater saved on another machine just in case you cannot get the internet connection to work - saves the 350MB download also]
- if still unhappy drive then backup, followed by Erase and Install (worst case scenario) If it acts up after an erase and install I assume the drive is faulty and make plans to change out drive (have never been here). On an average guess 3 years 7/24 is the leading edge of failures and if you have a clean power supply you should expect up to 7 years of drive happiness but always expect it after 3-4 years.

* - sometimes Disk Repair cannot repair the drive because it is the startup drive requiring you to restart from the DVD and using the Disk Repair on the startup DVD. This can occur after power failures when hard shutdowns occur. Best advice is a Very Good battery Backup. It will give you up to 45 minutes to shut the machine down and strips out most power blips. The economics are easy to justify - 1 repair/lost file costs you about he same as the backup box and that cost where I am is in the mid $100's. Cheap insurance.