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Black screen of death

M

Macowner2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 6, 2008
17
0
45 miles north of London
Since loading the Mountain Lion upgrade I have been plagued by the black screen on bootup this only occurs after shut down and the mains has been switch off.
I have tried resetting the PRAM many times, in the end I got so fed up I down loaded Mountain Lion again reformatted the hard drive, then went through the nausea of loading every thing again. After many hours of trying to get things back together and saving the new setup to time machine I am getting The Black screen of Death that comes on with startup after being discontinued from the mains with loads of white literature then type EXIT, unless I hold the Alt key on startup and select the hard drive.

Whats going wrong. Any help and suggestions welcome. (oh forget the box of matches)
 
D

DoubleVision19

macrumors member
Aug 14, 2010
46
0
Sounds like your "downloaded" version of ML is corrupted. I'd try to see if you can download it from a different computer; burn it onto a disc or download it onto a flash drive and then try to perform a clean install via your unit's SuperDrive or USB. If that fails, I'd take it over to the Genius Bar and have them install ML for you since their copy definitely works. A clean install from the Genius Bar should not take more that 30mins (including updates) to install since it's done via ethernet.

Have you already ran a hardware diagnostics check on your hard drive? If it failed the test, you probably need to replace the hard drive before installing ML.
 
M

Macowner2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 6, 2008
17
0
45 miles north of London
Black screen of death

Hi OLD CODGER (no pun intended I'm one 2)
Many thanks for the reply. My imac is a intel 2.66 2008 vintage. I have discounted the Pram battery as according to the books "I don't loose any date, timezone or desktop memory" so on that score it seems unlikely anyway on this machine it quotes it as un-replaceable.
Kind regards
 
M

Macowner2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 6, 2008
17
0
45 miles north of London
Black screen of death

Hi DoubleVision2
Thank you for the reply and info.
I had thought I had a gash download so I used my friends USB stick which he installed his ML on a laptop and his is OK. I formatted the HD and using his stick loaded the OS with the same fault. I then re-formatted my HD yet again downloaded another copy of ML it seemed to be OK, but no same problem.
I have just printed off page 43 of the user manual that details the Hardware Test, only to find this does not work with a wireless keyboard. Well that proved futile!! After digging around to find the USB keyboard and mouse then firing up from cold mains and holding the D key nothing happens and the conventional desktop comes on line. So now there is another saga, but as it seems to work properly although the Hardware Test doesn't want to work, at least not the way the instructions say.
I will leave it until it fails again, hence the motto "If it works don't fix it:
Thanks again
 
D

DoubleVision19

macrumors member
Aug 14, 2010
46
0
Macowner2 said:
Hi DoubleVision2
Thank you for the reply and info.
I had thought I had a gash download so I used my friends USB stick which he installed his ML on a laptop and his is OK. I formatted the HD and using his stick loaded the OS with the same fault. I then re-formatted my HD yet again downloaded another copy of ML it seemed to be OK, but no same problem.
I have just printed off page 43 of the user manual that details the Hardware Test, only to find this does not work with a wireless keyboard. Well that proved futile!! After digging around to find the USB keyboard and mouse then firing up from cold mains and holding the D key nothing happens and the conventional desktop comes on line. So now there is another saga, but as it seems to work properly although the Hardware Test doesn't want to work, at least not the way the instructions say.
I will leave it until it fails again, hence the motto "If it works don't fix it:
Thanks again
Click to expand...


Did you buy the extended Apple Care? If so, do you still have the AHT disc that came in the Apple Care box? You can use it to run some tests to see if one of your components are starting to fail.
 
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