Help with late 2011 21.5 iMac

[gwfami]

My son's iMac went down. I was able to recover the data from the HD using Disk Warrior, but I cannot get it to boot from a USB, the rescue partition or internet recovery, just goes to a gray screen. I'm pretty sure that the HD is toast but, the back of the computer is getting pretty hot in a couple of locations, and I'm trying to figure out what is causing this but I can't find an internal diagram of the computer to narrow down the possible causes.

Does anyone have similar issues or can anyone point me to an internal view of the computer?

Thanks,

GWFAMI

 

[Fishrrman]

If you cannot boot from an external source (as well as from the internal drive) -- that suggests some kind of hardware fault OTHER THAN the internal drive.

Even if the internal drive won't boot, you should still be able to "boot externally" IF the rest of the internal hardware is good...

 

[gwfami]

Thanks,
How would I go about determining what the fault is?

If you cannot boot from an external source (as well as from the internal drive) -- that suggests some kind of hardware fault OTHER THAN the internal drive.

Even if the internal drive won't boot, you should still be able to "boot externally" IF the rest of the internal hardware is good...

 

[Fishrrman]

Perhaps power supply or graphics failure?
Or a failure of the display panel itself?

Might not be worth the cost of repair...

 

[gwfami]

Perhaps, but how can it be tested?

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Got the original OS X.6 Snow Leopard DVD? Try and boot from that and see if there is any joy but sounds pretty heavy problems.

 

[gwfami]

No disc came with the system, start of net install. Had 10.7.

 

[padams35]

An internet apple hardware test might be worth a try: (Option-d startup key combo)

My only other suggestion would be to drag it in to an Apple store genius bar appointment.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Diagnostics that way is available for late 2013 and following models. Earlier models must use the Apple Hardware Test disc.

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT202731


If you do not have the original discs, go to this link and download the correct Apple Hardware Test for your iMac, burn to a USB thumb drive and boot from that. This of course requires you to use another Mac. Will not work on a Windows machine.


https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest