iMac fails to gray screen

My wife's early 2011 27 inch iMac running Mavericks with an SSD and 1 TB hard drive fails to a gray screen during operation. I managed to reboot into recovery mode and ran disk utilities - which found no problems. Worked for another day before failing again. Now I get the boot chime and a brief Apple logo - then nothing.

Of course, my 3 year Apple Care expired 3 months ago. I am wondering what my repair options are. I assume I can call the nearest Apple Store (1.5 hours away) and make an appointment for them to check it out.

Any thoughts on what the problems could be? I don't hear any clicking from the disks so I am guessing the hard drive hasn't failed (but could be wrong). I wonder if it could be overheating. Do iMac fans fails regularly? Just looking for thoughts more knowledgeable than my own.

Your wife's iMac has three fans, I doubt any of them have failed. I'm betting the primary drive has failed even though Disk Utility shows it was OK. My 2011 iMac's hard drive failed after 2.5 years of use but was replaced at no cost by Apple since it was still in Apple care at the time.

If the drive has failed as I suspect, you're probably looking at an approximate $150 labor cost plus whatever Apple is charging for a replacement drive. BTW, that drive is proprietary and has to be replaced by the same one.

I could be wrong about the drive failing but in any event, Apple will run their diagnostics and will know for sure what's wrong.

Here's something else. I have a backup on an external drive cloned with Carbon Copy Cloner. If I hold the option key, I can see this drive and select it to boot from. I get the same brief Apple logo and then a blank screen. I would have thought if it was a failed drive I would be able to boot from the clone.

Also, I have a Mavericks install usb drive. On my other iMac, this drive shows up as an option when holding the option key during boot. On my wife's iMac it doesn't appear - as if it is not recognizing the usb ports either.

Thanks for any more thoughts.

Good point about the external hard drive. When the hard drive on my 2011 iMac failed, I was still able to boot with my CCC backup drive and press on until I got to the Apple store for repairs. I hope for the sake of your wallet that it's nothing more serious. The Apple store genius bar will do the diagnostics for free right there at the counter and give you an estimate of repairs. Let us know.

Just came back from the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. They ran diagnostics on my mid-2011 27 inch iMac and found a failed video card. Apparently the video card could be repaired on this model because the cost for the repair would have been $387. However, the video card failure is a known problem with Apple so they have increased the warranty on the video cards for my model to 4 years from original sale. As a result the repair is free and I should have it back in 3 to 7 days. Happy Dance!!!!!

Stroke of luck there my friend.

Nah Sly ~ great after sales service.

Agreed. Apple has done this kind of thing numerous times in the past. Can't really think of anyone with a similar record on the PC side. Gateway probably came closest when they were still an independent company.

Bob_Stan said:

Just came back from the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. They ran diagnostics on my mid-2011 27 inch iMac and found a failed video card. Apparently the video card could be repaired on this model because the cost for the repair would have been $387. However, the video card failure is a known problem with Apple so they have increased the warranty on the video cards for my model to 4 years from original sale. As a result the repair is free and I should have it back in 3 to 7 days. Happy Dance!!!!!

Click to expand...

That's great news. The 27" iMacs that year used AMD Radeon cards in the GPU slot. Actually two different cards were used depending on which model iMac you purchased. I'm not sure if those cards are slotted or surface mounted. If they're surface mounted, it means Apple is giving you a completely new logic board. Nice.

That's good to know as I have the same mid-late 2011 27" model - just in case.

My Extended Apple Care runs out Oct 2014, so it's interesting to read that they may have provided an extension. I hadn't heard of that.

My old 2007 15" MBPro succumbed with the bad Nvidia video problem, but I was lucky enough to just get under the wire of the extended warranty they had for those Macs.

I don't think the Apple Care is extended - just the coverage for the video card problem.

Bob_Stan said:

I don't think the Apple Care is extended - just the coverage for the video card problem.

Click to expand...

That's usually the case. If they extend the warranty it usually covers certain specific components.

It seems that Apple implemented the extended care for some 2011 iMacs a year ago.

But it just applies to those with the AMD Radeon HD 6970M video cards used in the 2001 27-inch iMac computers.

I guess I'm exempt and missed the possible problem as mine has the AMD Radeon HD 6770M card installed.
iMac (27-inch): AMD Radeon 6970M Video Card Replacement Program

Phew... relief I guess.

End of my story - dropped my (wife's) iMac off at the Apple store Saturday at 2:30 for the video card replacement and picked it up today (two days later) at 6:30. The card was replaced with the same model as it had (no surprise). Back to running great.