Mac not starting up

[russlachanse]

I just restarted my mac and it seemed to be going fine until a screen came up only giving me the option to restart or shut down. I tried restarting several times with the same message being displayed.
Thanks for your help
Russ

 

[yellow]

Sounds like a kernel panic. Does it look like the images on this page?

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106227

Apple has info there for trying to recover from a kernel panic.

 

[russlachanse]

it's different than that...

Yellow,
Thanks for your reply
It's not that screen. (OS X.2)
When I start the computer it comes up like normal with the progress bar then the screen turns blue as normal but instead of the documents and folders appearing on the desktop a dialog box with my computer's name shows up and only gives me the option of restart or shut down. I think the first time it happened it told me that I couldn't be logged in but I never got that message again.
Thanks

 

[yellow]

Hmmm.. almost like a login screen with no user to log into? Something like this, without the users?

 

[russlachanse]

yes very close to that

yes very close to that
with only the restart and shut down option

 

[yellow]

Hmm that's really strange, I've never encountered that. Do you normally have autologin? There's no chance to choose a user/enter a username and enter a password?

I'd start by booting from the installer CD/DVD and running Disk Utility and running first aid on the disk.

 

[russlachanse]

I do normally have autologin and There's no chance to choose a user/enter a username and enter a password. I've never seen it either. I'll try to use the start up disk
Thanks

Russ

 

[wdlove]

I hope that you will be successful. Are you running Repair Permissions occasional and especially after major installations?

 

[russlachanse]

I've never even heard of Repair Permissions!

 

[slooksterPSV]

Repair Permissions - Everything that you use on OS X, has permissions. You have to have certain permissions to run certain things. Root is the permission-less master of all these permissions being it is a Super User and has read/write permission to any/everything basically.