Grey screen of death?

[othrguy]

After no problems this afternoon (or for the last two years), I turn on my macbook with OS 10.5 Leopard (no recently installed new software) and all I get is a grey screen. No spinning wheel, no ? mark, no message. Just blank.

Tried rebooting with install disc, to no effect. Tried burning a firmware restoration disc on my other computer (thank goodness for it!), and no effect on macbook. Can't get it to boot into single-user mode either.

Either there is some technique I am missing, or perhaps I have just encountered a grey screen of death?

Help? Anyone?

 

[applefan69]

this happened to me once on Leopard... I eventually ended up Archiving and re-instlling Leopard, then transfered my user files from the archive. It sucked but oh well.

BUT in your case you may not have to do that

try botting holding "V" this will boot in Verbose mode. In verbose mode it basically just means you boot viewing the commandline, so you can essentially see what processes your mac is doing, AND possibly what process its stuck at.

When leopard did that to me and i booted into verbose mode it went something like this


*regular booting mumbo jumbo*
*more regular booting, everything going fine*
*everything going perfect*
*something about strting WindowUIserver*
*windowUIserver failed to start, error logged*
*something about starting windowUIserver*
*windowUIserver failed to start, error logged*

then it just kept repeatin and I couldnt ever boot. So i guess you can try Verbose booting and see what it says for you.

 

[othrguy]

this happened to me once on Leopard... I eventually ended up Archiving and re-instlling Leopard, then transfered my user files from the archive. It sucked but oh well.

How do you reinstall Leopard if it won't read the install disk?

I'm either really tired, or really stupid. Possibly both. /

 

[applefan69]

How do you reinstall Leopard if it won't read the install disk?

I'm either really tired, or really stupid. Possibly both. /

hmm... I missed that detail

you've tried sticking the disk in your mac

holding the C button BEFORE pressing the power button and continued holding C?