iMac start up fail.

When I power up my iMac it just makes a noise like it is about to start but just goes straight into a plain white screen. The wireless keyboard and mouse don't even connect. Anybody suggest any causes or remedies?

Have you tried booting the iMac with your original install recovery DVD? Also it helps us to help you if you include the year and model of your Mac and which version of OS X it's running.

year and model would help

This is what I would try but experts can help comment.

First when booting up hold the shift key down to boot into safe mode. See if this works. If it does try checking any startup services you have, this could be your problem. Also reset permissions and do a backup just in case for the future if you have problems.

If this doesnt work and you have a recovery partition such as in lion or mountain lion hold command+R at startup to enter this and do one of two things... if you have a backup already and dont mind, then right away reinstall the os and see if this solves your problems. If you for any reason feel this is a bad idea for your situation you can go to tools (on the menu at the top)> disk utility and do a repair of your startup disk permissions to see if this solves your problems.

Next, if this didnt work I would then hold option+D down on startup to enter mac's hardware test. This will need to connect to the internet but it will run an official hardware test on your mac. This will let you know if you have any problems hardware-wise as (the full one takes over an hour but maybe it would be best to do this and not a quick test)

If all else fails then try starting up in verbose mode command+V. Try to see if error in particular is displayed and post it on this site as some of the experts maybe able to shed light on this.

If this all didnt work then really the best thing to do if your mac is still under applecare protection is bring it into your local genius bar. They know what to do way better than I do.

A few things btw, you may want to consider in the future but may not have helped with your situation as I dont know all the details

Disk warrior which would have had to been run via an external hd or the CD they provided to fix your startup disk

Also applejack is a great little program which may or may not have helped but its a good utility to have and can be run via single-user mode (command+S on startup).

Three things..

1) always have a backup, this may happen again if you manage to solve this problem simply on your own
2) If this turns into a real technical issue and you can afford to then always consider the mac specialists - dont do everything on your own - believe me I speak from experience and you can make a simple problem a lot worse by not knowing what your doing.
3) as you can see there is a lot of startup options for your mac, so as you will hear time and time again, use a firmware password for security reasons. This is done in the recovery partition under tools but can also be done under terminal

AppleJack Project Page
How to Set the Firmware Password in Mac OS X | ChrisWrites.com

The iMac was bought in 2008.

I have tried all of the above and nothing at all. I have put the instillation disc in and nothing happens then either. After about 5 minutes the computer just spits the disc out.

Just waited until the flashing file and question mark cane up again and then put the instillation disc back in and now I get as far as to choose a location for re instillation however the computer does not give me a location to choose!!!!!

Ok, first try this solution and see how it goes: https://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570 (link to forum discussion - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3695137?start=0&tstart=0)




I did some more searching and I found similar steps to these in various places so this may be your problem. I dont want anything to happen to your computer because of this so please only try this if you feel comfortable doing it. Also, keep in mind this is just something else to try and im trying to help but I could only wish I was a mac engineer and knew everything mac (maybe someday )

here is the article: [SOLVED] Macbook white screen of death: startup chime, no boot. Shameful Apple. | The Pabster's notebook

read the whole thing first to see if it matches the issue you're having. Hopefully you have a backup in case something goes wrong.

Also, if someone posts anything else on this forum for you to do - I would consider trying that first as this method involves physically opening your computer.

Ill post again if I find anything else I find relating to this

newmanm said:

Ok, first try this solution and see how it goes: https://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570 (link to forum discussion - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3695137?start=0&tstart=0)




I did some more searching and I found similar steps to these in various places so this may be your problem. I dont want anything to happen to your computer because of this so please only try this if you feel comfortable doing it. Also, keep in mind this is just something else to try and im trying to help but I could only wish I was a mac engineer and knew everything mac (maybe someday )

here is the article: [SOLVED] Macbook white screen of death: startup chime, no boot. Shameful Apple. | The Pabster's notebook

read the whole thing first to see if it matches the issue you're having. Hopefully you have a backup in case something goes wrong.

Also, if someone posts anything else on this forum for you to do - I would consider trying that first as this method involves physically opening your computer.

Ill post again if I find anything else I find relating to this

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I've posted on other forums and a fair few seem to think its the hard drive that's gone.

When I open the disc utility the HD doesn't even appear as an option to choose and check. Only the start up disc in the machine and the cd drive its self appear.

You probably need to replace the defective hard drive. If Disk Utility can not "see" the drive, either the drive is dead or the SATA cable between the drive and logic board is defective.