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AppleWarMachine

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 27, 2011
1,084
640
Michigan, US
For the past week, my late 2009 27" iMac (3TB HDD) has been acting up. I leave my computer on all the time, but when i go to use it, it just has a grey screen, so I reboot, everything seems to start up fine (slowly), but when I go to launch any application, i get the spinning beach ball, then after a while the screen goes grey. Also, sometimes during the reboot, the screen will just turn grey as well. Any ideas??? (I am running Yosemite and have Not upgraded to El Capitan yet)
Thanks in advance :)
 

Samuelsan2001

macrumors 604
Oct 24, 2013
7,729
2,153
For the past week, my late 2009 27" iMac (3TB HDD) has been acting up. I leave my computer on all the time, but when i go to use it, it just has a grey screen, so I reboot, everything seems to start up fine (slowly), but when I go to launch any application, i get the spinning beach ball, then after a while the screen goes grey. Also, sometimes during the reboot, the screen will just turn grey as well. Any ideas??? (I am running Yosemite and have Not upgraded to El Capitan yet)
Thanks in advance :)

sounds like a dying hard drive to me.
 

Samuelsan2001

macrumors 604
Oct 24, 2013
7,729
2,153
sounds like a dying hard drive to me.

It may not be of course but that is what it sounds like, these things are very difficult to diagnose with just a description. If you have an external back up try booting from that if it works fine then it's your hard drive.
 

AppleWarMachine

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 27, 2011
1,084
640
Michigan, US
It may not be of course but that is what it sounds like, these things are very difficult to diagnose with just a description. If you have an external back up try booting from that if it works fine then it's your hard drive.

I do have and external back up and I'll try booting from that...thanks
 

AppleWarMachine

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 27, 2011
1,084
640
Michigan, US
Update...I erased my entire hard drive, did a clean/fresh install of OSX, used time machine to restore data and Boom...everything is back to normal (even upgraded to El Captain), thanks for your help
 
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