Please help! My 2009 mac laptop won't start-up!

Hello everyone. I'm writing from my guest account right now. A while ago my Mac stopped responding. I turned it off. When I turned it off it wouldn't load past the gray screen with the apple logo and loading circle. I turned it off and tried it a few times. Now at the loading screen, a loading bar will appear. I have no idea what this loading bar is, but it will load to approximately a quarter-way, then dissapear. At first I was optimistic about the bar, thinking it was just updating, but after it dissapeared the mac still would no load up. Even when I gave it enough time that the bar would of filled if it was still there! The strange thing is my guest account works.

Help!

Some specs about your Mac would help. Year and model? Which version of OS X are you running?

If you can log into your guest account OK, that means your regular (admin) account is probably corrupt. Have you done anything unusual to it lately? Installed new software, made any changes, etc.?

chscag said:

Some specs about your Mac would help. Year and model? Which version of OS X are you running?

If you can log into your guest account OK, that means your regular (admin) account is probably corrupt. Have you done anything unusual to it lately? Installed new software, made any changes, etc.?

Click to expand...

2009 MacBook Pro. To be honest I don't know what I'm running. I bought it used and refurbished.

Ah shoot. I did download something unusual a few days ago now that you mention it. A software to edit photos called GIMP I think. Could that of done it?

Do you know which version of OS X it's running? That's important because you may be looking at reinstalling OS X if your regular admin account is corrupt. And no, GIMP would not have caused that to happen unless something went very wrong. Also, I'm assuming you have not been making backups?