intel imac stuck on blue screen at startup

[Mogues]

Nothing working for Blue Screen loop so far... Help?

I see that this thread is rather old, but I thought I would give it a shot, nonetheless.

I am having a looping issue at the blue start up screen with my 2008 iMac (Desktop) running on 10.5.8 (with no hardware changes to date). When powering on, it does everything it should up until it gets to the launchd screen (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2674). No errors or verbiage given at that point. So far, I have attempted to:

• Reboot in safe mode (not even working)... both with pressing the shift key immediately after the bong noise and letting go once the progress timer starts... and also rebooting while holding the shift key down the entire time (since I have my iMac set to log in without a password at start up). End result, it eventually takes me back to the blue screen.
• Held down Command + S and ran Apple Jack in Single-User mode, went through all steps.
• Held down Command + V to initiate Verbose, but I can't say that I know what I am looking for exactly...
• Held down D at start up and ran an Apple Hardware Test. No problems Found.
• Held down Option (Alt) to show the drives available to use, blue screen eventually loads again...
• SMC reset: Powered off the desktop, unplugged all cables, also pressed the power button while unplugged to drain off any remaining power source, and plugged only the mouse and keypad back in before plugging the power cable back in and powered back on. Same results.
• Reset PRAM (several times today). Nothing different happened.
• Attempted some of these steps in various orders as well.

None of this has worked so far. I need to see if I can find my start up disk, but it's from 2008. It could be buried in a drawer somewhere...

I did see this link too, but with it being from 2010, I am curious if there is anything more recent to try since this was originally posted: http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_doesn%27t_boot.

 

[Sparky445]

You should try to repair permissions.

 

[ejmetz]

It worked!! It worked!!

I suggest disconnecting the iMac completely with all cables removed including the power cable for 10 seconds or so. Then reconnect with only a mouse and keyboard and maybe ethernet cable. Might work. I've experienced long startup times with grey screen and blue screen for minutes (around 5 minutes) until I did this. Oh yeah, and disconnected any external drives and the printer.

This post is somewhat old, but the above worked for me when I was about to give up hope! My 2006 Intel iMac would not boot into ANYTHING! Not Safe Mode, not recovery, not external, not a bootable OSX CD. Finally, after trying this, it booted right into the normal hard drive! Wow!

Thanks MacAndy74!!

 

[Sacha Baptista]

Nothing working for Blue Screen loop so far... Help?

I see that this thread is rather old, but I thought I would give it a shot, nonetheless.

I am having a looping issue at the blue start up screen with my 2008 iMac (Desktop) running on 10.5.8 (with no hardware changes to date). When powering on, it does everything it should up until it gets to the launchd screen (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2674). No errors or verbiage given at that point. So far, I have attempted to:

• Reboot in safe mode (not even working)... both with pressing the shift key immediately after the bong noise and letting go once the progress timer starts... and also rebooting while holding the shift key down the entire time (since I have my iMac set to log in without a password at start up). End result, it eventually takes me back to the blue screen.
• Held down Command + S and ran Apple Jack in Single-User mode, went through all steps.
• Held down Command + V to initiate Verbose, but I can't say that I know what I am looking for exactly...
• Held down D at start up and ran an Apple Hardware Test. No problems Found.
• Held down Option (Alt) to show the drives available to use, blue screen eventually loads again...
• SMC reset: Powered off the desktop, unplugged all cables, also pressed the power button while unplugged to drain off any remaining power source, and plugged only the mouse and keypad back in before plugging the power cable back in and powered back on. Same results.
• Reset PRAM (several times today). Nothing different happened.
• Attempted some of these steps in various orders as well.

None of this has worked so far. I need to see if I can find my start up disk, but it's from 2008. It could be buried in a drawer somewhere...

I did see this link too, but with it being from 2010, I am curious if there is anything more recent to try since this was originally posted: http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_doesn't_boot.

I am right where you are... did you get any luck?