Mouse and keyboard not working.

Ok, a bit of history, this is an IMAC with OS X installed. Last week "something" happened while my 14 year old son was using it and it wouldn't boot. Instead had a gray screen with a "no access" message in the middle (the circle with the slash, a file with a question mark and an apple flipping from one to another at a hundred miles an hour). I took it an Apple store they said it was my hard drive and I left. I decided to try to reload the OS X and did so by forcing it at boot. WHAM, when I turned it back on it worked and nothing was lost! I was thrilled, well, enter my son again. He says he was trying to find how many photos we have in it, he is learning and I am happy to see it (long story he has ADHD and not much of a book learner) he opened the file from Iphoto and somewhere in time he accidently copied to the desk top all the photos (thousands). It was taking so long he thought it was froze and he turned it off.

Now, all we get is our desk top and no control from the mouse (other than moving the curser around) and I do notice the little picture of the Mac HD up in the right corner isn't there either. If on boot in the first seconds after it is booted I were to click on a program in the dock it does work, at least it TRIES to open the program and will then just lock up with the little raibow wheel spinning. If I don't touch it after boot it will simply have the curser that moves around and nothing else as mentioned before.

I have reloaded the OS X and it remains the same.

Any ideas?

Brian

Welcome to the Mac Forums.

It does sound very much like your hard drive has either died or is dying. Unless you have been making backups of your data, it could all be gone along with the dead or dying hard drive.

I know you're thinking why did it work again after you reinstalled OS X? The drive was likely failing the first time but had enough "spoof" in it to go for a bit more. Happens all the time.

If your iMac is not under warranty, you can replace the hard drive yourself. Any kind of interior work on an iMac is a rather difficult task because the entire display has to be removed first before gaining access to the inside of the machine. You can get an idea of what's involved by going to iFixit: The free repair manual and looking up changing out a hard drive on an iMac. They have a step by step that can be followed.

Thanks for the response, it makes me sick to think of all the data. The sad part is I don't have it backed up and was planning on doing it asap but to make a long story short it is a very hectic time in my home right now and it didn't happen.

Thanks I will look into changing the hard drive before I just take it in.

Brian