eMac Stuck at Grey Screen & Spinning Progress Indicator

[TheWineLover]

Greetings and saluations everyone. I've recently delved into the OSX world via secondhand eMac. The specs are eMac (2006 - not a typo... this is what it says)/1.42gHz/80GB HDD/1GB ram/etc. It came equipped with 10.4.6, did an update to the software and it brought the machine to 10.4.11.

After a week or so of tinkering, I think I have accidentally deleted some very necessary system files. Given that the computer did not come with any manuals or recovery discs, I've been doing some major digging over the last three days via internet and can not come up with a fix for my new love. I saw this post on MacRumors and it nearly is exactly what I'm experiencing: Mac chimes upon pressing of start button, goes to greyish screen with grey Apple logo and a spinning progress indicator then the computer goes silent (no HDD/CD activity)... yet keeps the active grey screen.

I've tried booting into safe mode but to no avail which leads me to think I've accidentally deleted some extremely necessary boot files. However, I do not remember emptying the trash during the last successful boot... is there a way from a command line prompt to "put the files back" to where they go?

I've downloaded several Mac OSX Leopard torrents but can't get them to boot off of USB drive, DVD RW external drive, external USB hard drive nor via OSX 9 CD ... Indeed, I am trying to burn from windows but have learned of several utilities which create ISOs in Mac Format and will decompress DMG files (ISOBuster & TransMac).

Please... will someone give me some good news? For example, telling me there is a way to boot from USB drive (and in what format the mac needs to boot - ISO? DMG? Expanded file system in appropriate directory folders? I don't care about wiping the hard drive... that's absolutely fine... I just need a working system again.

Thank you so much, in advance, for any expertise you can lend me.

Kindest Regards,
- TWL

 

[ArtistRich]

There is (possibly) hope! (maybe.)

While you might be right in your assessment of the lack of some key files leading to a catastrophic boo-boo (technical jargon) it also sounds possible that your machine is not targeting the correct startup disk. Make sure there are no CD/DVD's in the optical drive, unplug all USB/1394 peripherals except keyboard and restart. If you still get a gray screen (not blue, blue is good.) and have recently added a second Hard Drive, you might need to remove the hard drive which does NOT contain your MacOS. Also, one last thought, I had a similar experience with an old G4 and found out that the RAM which had been in the machine and functioning properly from the time I acquired the G4 actually was not the same type. So, once I removed the RAM that differed from the G4's original spec, EVERYTHING worked better.

Good Luck! (But you're probably still screwed.)

 

[dops7107]

Seeing as you can't get it to boot from DVD, you could try getting a FireWire drive that has MacOSX installed on it, and boot from that. I appreciate that may be hard to get hold of, but it will allow you to rescue what you need from the internal drive. Then re-install OSX on the internal drive while still booted up in Firewire mode.

That's my best suggestion as it seems you're stuck with the machine as it is.

 

[czachorski]

My mother's eMac did the same thing a couple of years back, and it was a dead logic board. I hope this is not the fate of yours, because it is very expensive and almost certainly means scrapping the machine.

The biggest thing that concerns me is the inability to boot from an install DVD. I would rule out whether it was a bad burn or caused by your computer as a top priority. It might be time to go spring for an OS-X install disc. Leopard from the Apple store right away, or perhaps Tiger from ebay for a nice discount.