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IMac won't boot up

BASRPH

BASRPH

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 27, 2010
88
1
Central Illinois
When I restart or turn on my IMac it takes a long time for the apple logo to appear then a progress bar appears but it too takes a long time to complete. Then the only that appears is a picture of the mouse or scroll pad and where the on/off switch is for those devices. I can't get past this point. Any suggestions?
 
Your iMac is reporting that it doesn't find a mouse or trackpad connected. Then, your iMac checks for a bluetooth device. If none is found, then you get that window, asking you to turn on your bluetooth device (mouse or trackpad).
If that is what you have, check (or replace) the batteries.
Turn off your bluetooth device, then turn it back on to make it discoverable.

If you don't have a bluetooth mouse at all, but you have a wired USB mouse, unplug that mouse, then plug back in to your iMac. Make sure it plugs in to built-in USB port, and not a USB hub.
 
DeltaMac said:
Your iMac is reporting that it doesn't find a mouse or trackpad connected. Then, your iMac checks for a bluetooth device. If none is found, then you get that window, asking you to turn on your bluetooth device (mouse or trackpad).
If that is what you have, check (or replace) the batteries.
Turn off your bluetooth device, then turn it back on to make it discoverable.

If you don't have a bluetooth mouse at all, but you have a wired USB mouse, unplug that mouse, then plug back in to your iMac. Make sure it plugs in to built-in USB port, and not a USB hub.
Click to expand...
OK I did that and it allowed me to get a little further. Now I am seeing a OS X Utility box that appears. When I click on Disk Utility option and select OS X Base System, then First Aid, I notice available space is only 31.3 MB. The capacity is 1.3 GB and Used is 1.3 GB too. What do I do next to see which files I could erase to free up some space ? I presume that is what I need to do correct?
 
In Disk Utility, you should see your hard drive. The OS X Base System that you see is NOT your hard drive, that is, not your normal system that YOU boot to run your computer. It is the recovery partition. It is quite small, and you are booted to that, so it is working. The 1.3 GB would be accurate - and the files on THAT partition won't help you.

OS X Base System should not be the top item in the drive list in Disk Utility.
There will be a line above named disk1, disk may have another number.
What is above that disk line? You should at least see the name of your hard drive. Original name would be Macintosh HD, but you may have changed the name of your hard drive.
If there are no entries above the "disk1" line, then your boot partition is not visible, probably because it has failed.
You will get to replace your hard drive.

Do you still have the 2007 iMac that you posted about a few months ago? If yes, then you have simply continued to have symptoms which COULD be a failing hard drive, and now it has likely become much worse.
Check again in Disk Utility - if your hard drive is NOT showing in Disk Utility (remember, it has to show the name of the hard drive, which should be the same as what you remember - like Macintosh HD, for example.), then you likely have no choice with your old iMac, except to replace the hard drive.
Just so you understand - the hard drive is where all your pictures, all your music, all you personal files, etc, are stored.
If you have your hard drive backed up (copied) to an external drive, then you will be OK. If you do NOT have your files backed up to another drive, and everything is in your iMac drive, then you might be too late for that...
Let me know what you find out....
 
DeltaMac said:
In Disk Utility, you should see your hard drive. The OS X Base System that you see is NOT your hard drive, that is, not your normal system that YOU boot to run your computer. It is the recovery partition. It is quite small, and you are booted to that, so it is working. The 1.3 GB would be accurate - and the files on THAT partition won't help you.

OS X Base System should not be the top item in the drive list in Disk Utility.
There will be a line above named disk1, disk may have another number.
What is above that disk line? You should at least see the name of your hard drive. Original name would be Macintosh HD, but you may have changed the name of your hard drive.
If there are no entries above the "disk1" line, then your boot partition is not visible, probably because it has failed.
You will get to replace your hard drive.

Do you still have the 2007 iMac that you posted about a few months ago? If yes, then you have simply continued to have symptoms which COULD be a failing hard drive, and now it has likely become much worse.
Check again in Disk Utility - if your hard drive is NOT showing in Disk Utility (remember, it has to show the name of the hard drive, which should be the same as what you remember - like Macintosh HD, for example.), then you likely have no choice with your old iMac, except to replace the hard drive.
Just so you understand - the hard drive is where all your pictures, all your music, all you personal files, etc, are stored.
If you have your hard drive backed up (copied) to an external drive, then you will be OK. If you do NOT have your files backed up to another drive, and everything is in your iMac drive, then you might be too late for that...
Let me know what you find out....
Click to expand...



Above the OS X Base System the only thing I see is the name of my external hard drive where I think, not sure, my Time machine backups went. I also started to use backups on Carbonite but I'm not sure what the most recent one was. How can I find out if my Time Machine backups went to the Macintosh HD or the external hard drive?
 
If you don't see the hard drive at all, then it doesn't make too much difference where the Time Machine backup is.
If on Macintosh HD, then it's most likely all gone.
If you DID have a backup, then your chance is that it was, in fact, on the external.
I don't know if you can check that out for sure, unless you have a good system to boot.
You COULD try plugging your external in to another Mac, and see if a backups folder exists. If you find one on that drive, then you might be good to go. Then, all you would need to do is replace the bad hard drive.
Reinstall OS X. On your old 2007 iMac, your only choice is to do that from a flash drive, as it is too old to connect to the Internet Recovery system.
Were you still running 10.9.5 Yosemite? Then you would have that available to you from the App Store when you connect to your AppleID account, then go to purchases tab. Then you would be able to download the Yosemite installer.
If you already have that installer, and it's available to you on a flash drive, then that's even simpler. Reinstall Yosemite.
When that completes, you will get to the new user setup screens, and one of the first choices is to restore from a Time Machine backup. Connect your external drive, and the TM backup (if it exists) should be ready to restore.
Good luck!
 
Thanks for all the info,DeltaMac. I plugged in the external HD into my MacBook and it looks like most everything is there. Don't know now if I'll just have them replace the HD in the IMac or look for a new one.
 
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