hanging on restart

[Keepoffthegrass]

Here is a strange one.
My 2007 alu imac has had a bit of an issue whereby if switched off it hangs on the spinning gear when re-starting. I have done a fresh install of ML and i thought that would solve it but alas no.
It does seem to happen when iPhoto hangs as well and i have to force quit it. ( i put this doen to a 100GB library )
I can boot from my external backup fine and after i have done this when re-booting in to my internal HD it seems to solve the problem for a bit.
I have checked the memory which is fine.
As a precaution i have just reset the pram and the SMC. And i seem to be getting the chime again.
Any ideas on what could be causing this ? Could the HD be goosed ?

Many thanks

 

[justperry]

Here is a strange one.
My 2007 alu imac has had a bit of an issue whereby if switched off it hangs on the spinning gear when re-starting. I have done a fresh install of ML and i thought that would solve it but alas no.
It does seem to happen when iPhoto hangs as well and i have to force quit it. ( i put this doen to a 100GB library )
I can boot from my external backup fine and after i have done this when re-booting in to my internal HD it seems to solve the problem for a bit.
I have checked the memory which is fine.
As a precaution i have just reset the pram and the SMC. And i seem to be getting the chime again.
Any ideas on what could be causing this ? Could the HD be goosed ?

Many thanks

So, after resetting PRAM and SMC you still have the problem, you don't say this.

 

[Keepoffthegrass]

Hi ,
Yes sorry to clarify ,
I reset the pram and the SMC after i booted from the external.
Probably not the best move in fault diagnosis.
Booting from another disk and then booting in to the main drive does seem to solve the issue.
Its almost as if the main drive is missing some code to get started and gets stuck in a loop - booting from another drive re-writes this code then it is fine again.
I am starting to blame this on iPhoto which more often than not hangs on quit and i have to force quit it.

 

[Keepoffthegrass]

Does anybody have any ideas ?

 

[forty2j]

Boot off your recovery disk (holding down C with the CD in the drive) and run Disk Utility to repair the drive. I suspect your HDD is about to give up the ghost.

Also, try Apple Hardware Test (boot holding down D with the recovery CD in the drive).

 

[Keepoffthegrass]

Boot off your recovery disk (holding down C with the CD in the drive) and run Disk Utility to repair the drive. I suspect your HDD is about to give up the ghost.

Also, try Apple Hardware Test (boot holding down D with the recovery CD in the drive).

Ill give that a try buddy ,
Thanks for getting back to me

 

[Keepoffthegrass]

Well i tried the above and the results were intermittent ,
I tied it down to when iPhoto had a crash and i had to force quit then it wold not re-boot successfully.
I tried all the in-house solutions to fix iPhoto but it still had the same problem.
I then used iPhoto library manager ( 3rd party software) to rebuild my iPhoto library.
It now starts and quits like a dream with no more crashes.
Due to this the iMac restarts successfully.
All i can put this down to was that iPhoto was looking for a picture that was not there or corrupted and this caused it to hang. This then had a knock on with the OS and caused problems.
Thanks to those who offered solutions and i hope this update helps anyone in the same predicament .

 

[justperry]

Well i tried the above and the results were intermittent ,
I tied it down to when iPhoto had a crash and i had to force quit then it wold not re-boot successfully.
I tried all the in-house solutions to fix iPhoto but it still had the same problem.
I then used iPhoto library manager ( 3rd party software) to rebuild my iPhoto library.
It now starts and quits like a dream with no more crashes.
Due to this the iMac restarts successfully.
All i can put this down to was that iPhoto was looking for a picture that was not there or corrupted and this caused it to hang. This then had a knock on with the OS and caused problems.
Thanks to those who offered solutions and i hope this update helps anyone in the same predicament .

Good for you, glad you eventually solved it.
Must have been a corrupt library as you said, so you see even OS X has it's problems now and then.

Cheers