iMac won't boot into single user mode.

[dogbone]

I'm trying to speed up a very sluggish imac and thought I'd run through applejack but if I hold down the shift key when restarting it gets stuck at the grey screen and I have to turn it off. It boots up normally otherwise. There's plenty of ram and hd space.

So what could be causing it to not want to start in single user mode.

 

[Angrist]

IIRC holding shift boots into "safe mode", not single user mode. Safe mode runs a filesystem and hardware check while it's sitting at the grey so it takes a LOOOONG time to boot.

Single user mode is started by holding cmd-S while booting.

 

[mynerdpantsrhot]

My iMac won't boot in single user mode

Hey! Hope to find some help. I am trying to run disk utilities on my iMac
specs
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B09
SMC Version (system): 1.9f4
I've tried: command s (single user mode)
option (to choose start up disk)


I could run Applejack or Disk Utility or fsck. I'd even make a copy of my HD on an external HD and then run diskutilities from their but can't get it to let me have some start up options.

Please help.