Stuck on grey screen with Apple symbol - Have tried many solutions in the forums

Hi,

I have a Macbook (late 2009 model I believe) with OS X Lion installed. I woke up this morning and my computer was frozen. I did a hard shutdown and restarted the computer. On restart I got a grey screen with the Apple symbol and nothing past that. While trying to troubleshoot earlier I was able to boot in safe-mode, but no longer can. I have done a repair disk and repair disk permissions and everything seems to be fine there.

Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated

Thanks,
Kyle

How did you do a repair disk and permissions if you can't get the machine to startup? Did you use Recovery (command + r) to start?

Yes, I used command+r to run the repair disk and permissions

I was going to suggest that your hard drive might be at fault, but if you ran Disk Utility from the Recovery partition and the drive passed, I don't know. And since you can't boot normally, there's no way to run the SMART utility to double check the drive.

The fact that you can not get into Safe Boot mode also makes me suspect a hardware error. And the leading suspect is usually the hard drive. Is your hard drive the original drive which came with the machine new?

It's the original hard drive. When I first discovered the problem this morning I was able to boot in safe mode. One of the troubleshooting forums I found on the Apple page suggested booting in safe mode and then immediately restarting the computer once in safe mode. I tried this and nothing changed, then I was unable to boot into safe mode again after that. I can get into single user mode, but I'm not sure what my options for fixing this problem are once I'm there.

***update***

I was just able to boot my computer in safe mode. But I'm not sure what to do from here!!!

I can get into single user mode, but I'm not sure what my options for fixing this problem are once I'm there.

Click to expand...

Being able to boot to single user mode indicates that at least the hard drive is working although it may be problematic. Try running a file system check from single user mode and let us know the results.

Here's Apple's instructions for doing a file system check in Single User Mode:

To use fsck, you must run it from the command line. Unlike using your mouse pointer to open an application to do something, you'll need to type a text command at the prompt (#) to tell fsck what to do. The Terminal application (/Applications/Utilities) and single-user mode are two examples of command-line interfaces in which you can type such commands. To use fsck:

Start up your computer in single-user mode to reach the command line.
Note: If necessary, perform a forced restart as described in the Emergency Troubleshooting Handbook that came with your computer. On desktop computers, you can do this by pressing the reset/interrupt button (if there is one) or holding down the power button for several seconds. On portable computers, simultaneously press the Command-Control-power keys. If your portable computer doesn't restart with this method, you may need to reset the Power Manager.

At the command-line prompt type:

/sbin/fsck -fy

Press Return. fsck will go through five "phases" and then return information about your disk's use and fragmentation. Once it finishes, it'll display this message if no issue is found:

** The volume (name_of_volume) appears to be OK

If fsck found issues and has altered, repaired, or fixed anything, it will display this message:

***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

Important: If this message appears, repeat the fsck command you typed in step 2 until fsck tells you that your volume appears to be OK (first-pass repairs may uncover additional issues, so this is a normal thing to do).

When fsck reports that your volume is OK, type reboot at the prompt and then press Return.

Your computer should start up normally and allow you to log in.