Imac frozen in osx start up screen

[seancellis]

I'm running on a imac g4 and have gotten stuck in the start-up screen. The screen shows the loading gauge but nothing is loading. What do I do?!

 

[soberbrain]

See if this thread helps.

 

[iGuardian]

If all else fails, unplug and try again.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Don't unplug the Mac while it's trying to boot! The chances of hosing the hard drive are significant. If need be, hold the power button until the Mac powers down. I would try to restart in Single User Mode and run fsck on the drive. Here's how it's done:

Restart with the cmd-s keys held down, until you see a black screen with white characters. After the text stops scrolling, at the command prompt, type:

fsck -f [including the space, return]

If any repairs are reported, run fsck again until none are reported. Then, at the command prompt, type:

reboot [return]

If you can't restart in Single User Mode, then you have bigger problems.

 

[seancellis]

Thanks for your help, do i include the dash button ie fsc -f just before the f?
please excuse my stupidity I'm very new at this

Don't unplug the Mac while it's trying to boot! The chances of hosing the hard drive are significant. If need be, hold the power button until the Mac powers down. I would try to restart in Single User Mode and run fsck on the drive. Here's how it's done:

Restart with the cmd-s keys held down, until you see a black screen with white characters. After the text stops scrolling, at the command prompt, type:

fsck -f [including the space, return]

If any repairs are reported, run fsck again until none are reported. Then, at the command prompt, type:

reboot [return]

If you can't restart in Single User Mode, then you have bigger problems.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Exactly how it's shown: fsck -f, with a space before the dash. You might want to print out these instructions.