iMac in an infinite loop of death...

[munckee]

Ok, need some help here. I went to restart my iMac this morning and it hung on the load-out screen (clean desktop, no menu bar at the top, just sitting there). So I powered it down manually by holding the button in and turned it back on. Now it won't boot up properly...

It gets past the "bing" and the grey loading screen, but on the blue screen following it just sits there. A load spinner will show up for a moment, the screen flashes to a lighter blue, then back to the blue loading screen...infinitely.

I tried zapping the pram twice, but no dice. Any help??

 

[munckee]

Guess I posted too quickly; I managed to get this fixed. If anyone is going through the same thing, I fixed it by booting into safe mode and then repairing permissions from disk utility.

 

[Pndrgnsvc]

Try restarting in Safe Boot Mode (Hold the Shift key while restarting). The computer will go through a self-check and repair, ergo, the startup will be a bit longer.) Also, you will need your password.

This restart will load only the essential system elements, so normal operation from there is not possible, so once the Safe Boot has completed, restart again.

Better? What happened?