Won't start up, just gray screen

Hi,

Some programs were not opening on my computer so I decided to restart. However, the computer won't restart and I just get a gray screen with an apple icon and a moving circle.

I've looked on some forums and so far I have tried the following in this order but to no avail......

1. Safe Boot
2. Reset the NVRAM/PRAM
3. Ran safe boot with Shift-Command-V and got the following: "getty repeating too quickly on port/dev/console, sleeping"
4. Used install disc to use disk utility and ran disk repair which fixed one thing and then ran permissions repair
5. Re-ran safe boot with Shift-Command-V and the result changed from console to fax i.e. "getty repeating too quickly on port/dev/fax, sleeping"
6. Tried fsck -fy and got "the volume Macintosh appears to be ok"
7. Typed reboot

None of the above have worked. Should I now try to archive and install. I'd rather not start with this as when it comes to computers I have no idea what I'm doing and it's taken me 5 hours to get this far. Also as I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to computers I've never created a back up so I don't want to risk losing 3 years of music, photos and work and personal documents. I know I should have created a back up.

I have seen a similar posting on a forum which was resolved by the user going into system preferences and unclicking on "receive faxes on this computer", however as my computer doesn't go past the gray screen I don't know how to get to system preferences.

I anyone could help with any of the above I would be very, very thankful.

Fingers crossed !!

Since you already ran Disk Utility from the install media, try running the Apple Hardware Test. See the following Apple KB article: Link

Also try resetting the System Management Controller (SMC). Link

For future reference - when posting about a problem, it would be helpful if you would tell us what operating system you're running (10.4, 10.5, etc) and the year/model of your machine.

Regards.

Don't forget about blessing

One thing you didn't mention that can result in the gray screen syndrome is blessing.

That is to say, the firmware looks for a particular file in a particular folder from a particular partition in order to get the ball rolling. If it can't find that partition, folder, or file, then the dummy is spat.

The only way to fix it that I know of is to boot into OS X somehow (I use my external hard drive, which contains a backup of my internal hard disk, but you could use your install disc).

Then you go into Terminal and type: bless --info. Let us know what it says.

Richard