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Stuck on grey Apple screen

themightyspitz

themightyspitz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sorry if this is the wrong forum to post this...

My dad has a 20" PPC Mac desktop with 512MB RAM. Today we wanted to do some work on iDVD, and when we started it up, I saw that there were a number of updates we didn't do for a while, 14 total. So I update them....took a long time, but eventually I get to restart the comp and it starts installing. It stalls at about 15% for roughly 30 mins; I wanted to leave it, but a power outage hit and the thing went black. Now when I try to turn it back on, it gets stuck on the grey Apple screen and won't start up. I looked around and tried restarting in Safe Mode by holding shift, but nothing. Anyone have any advice?
 
themightyspitz said:
Sorry if this is the wrong forum to post this...

My dad has a 20" PPC Mac desktop with 512MB RAM. Today we wanted to do some work on iDVD, and when we started it up, I saw that there were a number of updates we didn't do for a while, 14 total. So I update them....took a long time, but eventually I get to restart the comp and it starts installing. It stalls at about 15% for roughly 30 mins; I wanted to leave it, but a power outage hit and the thing went black. Now when I try to turn it back on, it gets stuck on the grey Apple screen and won't start up. I looked around and tried restarting in Safe Mode by holding shift, but nothing. Anyone have any advice?
Click to expand...

How long is it getting stuck for? Sometimes after updates it does more configuration after the boot so it will stick at the gray screen for longer than usual.
 
ruckus said:
How long is it getting stuck for? Sometimes after updates it does more configuration after the boot so it will stick at the gray screen for longer than usual.
Click to expand...

I left it on for at least half an hour. Usually it stays on the gray screen for about 30 seconds or so before booting up.
 
ruckus said:
Wish I could be more help but I don't have a lot of experience troubleshooting macs.
Click to expand...

No worries...I tried holding down the alt-option key the whole time instead of after the sound, and now I see the disk. Still not starting up, but at least it's responding, kinda.
 
Especially given the power outage, I'd strongly suspect disk damage. Do you know how to run Disk Utility from the reinstall discs, or fsck in Single User Mode? This is absolutely what I would do next.
 
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