iMac stuck at Apple logo

defboob said:

Yes a graphics card can indeed cause the boot up to get stuck at the apple logo

My 27" iMac had that problem, essentially the graphics card crapped out, leaving the iMac only able to display via software-rendering. If the drivers are present in the system files, my iMac hangs there. If I removed the ATI drivers from the directory, then the iMac boots up fine. You should be able to get into safe mode to try it out if this is the case.

found this to help out perhaps:

*In order to still use your computer, one of the thing you can do is remove the ATIRadeon Drivers.*
*What I did is to save it on my external Hard Drive in order to be able to replace it later.*
*The GPU is simply desactivate and all the job is done by the Dual Core.*
*Of course it is not so good as expected and HD movies lag to much but at least you can use your computer and wait for Apple and AMD to find something and change it for free.*

*Here is the list of the file to delete :*
*– /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000.kext*
*– /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000GA.plugin*
*– /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000GLDriver.bundle*
*– /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000VADriver.bundle*
*– /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX2000.kext*
*– /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX2000GA.plugin*
*– /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX2000GLDriver.bundle*
*– /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX2000VADriver.bundle*


I followed these instructions, restarted then emptied the trash & havent had any freezing pixels since. However I cannot watch videos in VLC or quick time, the screen saver looks very shaky. What I can do though is use photoshop, write code, surf the web and have basic functionality that I need without the screen freezing or going blank.

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