iMac grey screen

[carfac]

So my wife asks me whats wrong with the iMac. Nothing I know of. SHe says the screen is all grey. She restarted it to try and get it working, and it returnes to the grey screen...

So I check it out- sure enough, it is that grey weave screen that is the BG on Lion. The cursor arrow is there- and moves- but that is it.

I figger at this point there is not a whole lot to screw up, so I power it down with the button. It powers down rather quickly. I wait 30 seconds and power up... I would say within 10 seconds, I am back to the grey weave screen... that is it- nothing else.

Any ideas what to do here?

Thanks!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Do you have any other Mac with a Firewire port?

System Preferences > Displays >> Arrangement >>> Mirror Displays (also know, that when MIRROR DISPLAYS is checked, that the display with the lowest resolution determines the maximum resolution used on both, thus one display will have a lower than native resolution, except when both displays have the same native resolution)

If so, you could use Target Disk Mode to boot the iMac as HDD and connect it to your other Mac to try to repair or verify the disk via Disk Utility, though it sounds more like the user account of your wife may be corrupt. Are there any other user accounts on that iMac?

Maybe this could also help?

Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck
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