Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

11,1 iMac hanging on boot

J

Jethro!

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 4, 2015
336
342
Late 2009 iMac running High Sierra started having problems yesterday. First were strange graphics issues with odd colors and objects not being redrawn correctly. "Cleared" the problem by rebooting. But now it won't fully boot at all -- progress bar gets about 2/3 through, then hangs. Same thing happens when trying to boot from external drives. But I can safe boot into any drive, including external drives. Just no normal booting from any drive, any system.

Here's what I've tried so far...

Disk Utility: Reports all OK.
Single-user fsck: Reports all OK.
Reset PRAM
Disk Warrior: Shows directory damage.
But... DW cannot replace it with the optimized directory because of a "Mac OS services failure". Could this be because of limited functionality with safe boot mode?

So I seem to be stuck unable to repair the directory damage (if that's the problem). Any thoughts anyone?
 
How long have you waited to see if your iMac finishes a normal boot? I would probably call it quits after about 30 minutes.
Original hard drive? Maybe it's time to replace that. Spinning hard drives are pretty low cost now.
But, you can have a better result replacing the drive with an SSD - and end up with a faster, smoother system.

Be sure to try reseating the RAM sticks.
Do you still have the original restore DVD, so you can try booting to the hardware test on that DVD?
Can you boot with that restore DVD (booting to the installer), or boot to a drive with an OS X installer?
Can you boot to your recovery system? (Restart, holding Command-r) That's another partition on your boot drive, so a failure booting to recovery might still indicate that your hard drive may be failing.

As Disk Warrior reports directory problems, your best step forward is likely erasing that internal drive, and reinstalling fresh. You will want to make sure you have a backup of files and apps that you need to save (maybe your latest time machine backup?), as erasing will remove everything.
 
I've given it over 30 mins to finish booting, and it doesn't.
The HD that's in there is a replacement, a few years old. SMART status says it's ok.
RAM tests show everything ok.
I do have the original DVD and I can boot from it. But since upgrading to High Sierra the "old" Disk Utility won't see the HS volume.
Booting to recovery system works fine, but can't fix anything or doesn't think there's a problem.

If I could just get DW to replace this directory, I think it would fix the problem. But I keep getting the "Mac OS services failure" warning, likely because I can only boot into safe mode..?
 
Are you using a dedicated DiskWarrior boot disk (basically giving you only DiskWarrior options).
Or, booting to an external drive that has the Disk Warrior app available to use?
 
Booting to an external drive in safe mode, then running DW from that.
I have a bootable DW CD, but it won't boot -- it hangs just like every other disk.
 
I have seen that sometimes, and impending boot drive failure can prevent proper booting from any device.You may find that you have to disconnect the internal boot drive before you can boot properly.
Have you tried booting to your Recovery system?

If you have that original DVD, try booting to the hardware test. (Insert the DVD, then restart while holding the "D" key)
Run both the standard and extended tests.
 
So you can't even boot from an external drive without being in safe mode? If so, that really sounds like a hardware problem with the iMac. I agree with DeltaMac, try running Apple Hardware Test from the original DVD.

Also, what version of DiskWarrior do you have?
 
Yes, I can boot into the Recovery system. But all tests run in it report everything ok.
What's strange is while I can't boot into any full system, I CAN boot into an image of my original 10.6.8 -- that works fine.
I ran Apple Hardware Test from the DVD and it reported everything ok.
I took the iMac to an Apple Store Genius Bar yesterday and they several hours running lots of tests. All tests came back ok except 3 memory tests failed (rest were ok). They couldn't tell me what's wrong with it either. I juggled around swapping out sticks, ran more RAM tests and they all show ok.
So apart from an occasional graphics anomaly, everything is behaving as it should except it won't boot into anything but 10.6.8.

I have DW version 4.4, but with version 5 on order (not here yet).
 
Thanks, though it's looking more and more that it's the GPU on the fritz. Was able to erase the system drive and reinstall a High Sierra fresh. And with a clean OS I'm still getting the same problems. Graphics are weird.
 
Hey Jethro! You posted on my thread a few weeks back where I was having your exact issue with the exact same model of iMac. It has since turned out to be my GPU being buggered. We are going to try the oven method due to not having access to tools to reflow the GPU. Have you had any luck figuring your issue out?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back