iMac Stuck at Apple Logo

[IMcD23]

Hello,

I own a 17" iMac Core 2 Duo. It has been crashing more and more lately. Now when I turn it on, it sits at the apple logo. The spinner does not appear. I tried new sticks of ram, and same thing. I can boot off a windows or Linux cd with the c key, but they freeze halfway through bootup. I ran a hard disk check also.

Any suggestions?

-IMcD23

 

[spinnerlys]

Did you try the following, and if yes, which?


Mac doesn't boot

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


Troubleshooting: My computer won't turn on

 

[IMcD23]

I have reset the PRAM and SMC. It will not boot off my Snow Leopard DVD. I can not get to the single user mode prompt. It freezes before that!

Same with verbose.

 

[Consultant]

Sounds like hardware if you can't boot off optical either.

Did you try to install RAM or other hardware recently before you had the problems?

 

[IMcD23]

Yeah I suspected the ram too. I swapped all of them out for a spare 512mb chip which works in other macs. Same problem.

No other new hardware!

 

[Consultant]

You don't have an OS X optical disk?

 

[IMcD23]

I have a snow leopard disk yes, but it wont boot off it or any other cd.

 

[Consultant]

You have reset the PRAM already, but I would just leave it unplugged over night and try again.

Also, remove all connected devices (USB etc) except essential devices?

Have you tried to firewire boot from another mac, to try to backup data?

Probably want to call genius bar to see if there's a cost to get an assessment.

 

[IMcD23]

Same after overnight, there is no crucial data on this computer. It would just be nice if it could work as it is my secondary computer.

I will call the genius bar, but the closest retail store is 3 hours away from me.

 

[Detrius]

If you boot into verbose mode, the apple logo should not come up at all. You should have text on the screen, unless it freezes at a gray screen. That text will tell you if it's freezing at the same place every time.

The fact that it freezes booting from a windows cd implies it's not your hard drive. Just because the RAM is good doesn't mean it's not RAM-related. Try a different RAM slot--they can go bad. Otherwise, all that's left that early in the game is logic board (includes CPU) and graphics card.

 

[Velin]

You could also try installing snow leopard via Target Disk Mode using your firewire cable. I did that to my girlfriend's late model iMac, the damn thing simply would not boot or install Snow Leopard.

So I used Target Disk and installed it from my Macbook Pro. Then turned on the iMac, and it's run flawlessly.

But previous poster is correct, if you are in verbose, you shouldn't see logo, and this doesn't sound like a hard drive problem.