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Please help (grey screen asking me to restart my computer)

M

mac2thefuture

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 15, 2007
1,106
30
Lancashire, North West, UK
Hi, im getting a message on a grey screen asking me to restart my computer when i'm trying to start my imac????
So, i hold down the on / off button to do a hard restart and i get the same message again:eek::confused:
Any assistance greatly appreciated.
 
Have you tried booting from you install disk?


Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
mac2thefuture said:
I've just located my two install disks (never done this before). What's the process please, and, will I lose any personel data? Can I get to desktop first to save anything?

Thanks
Click to expand...

When you boot up hold the option key and your install disks should show up along with your boot HDD. Just use the arrow keys to select one and hit enter and it should boot from that disc. It takes much longer to boot from the install disc than the HD so be patient. You won't lose any personal data by booting from the disks but since I have never dealt with a Kernel Panic before I'm not sure what the steps should be to resolve the issue. If you have put in any new hardware to your computer recently, I would try to re-install what you had in before and try to boot up from your HD then.
 
touchdownjesus4 said:
When you boot up hold the option key and your install disks should show up along with your boot HDD. Just use the arrow keys to select one and hit enter and it should boot from that disc. It takes much longer to boot from the install disc than the HD so be patient. You won't lose any personal data by booting from the disks but since I have never dealt with a Kernel Panic before I'm not sure what the steps should be to resolve the issue. If you have put in any new hardware to your computer recently, I would try to re-install what you had in before and try to boot up from your HD then.
Click to expand...

I pressed option and got Mac HDD and Windows disc. Mac wouldn't load and sent me back to hard restart, Windows did work.
As for hardware I played around too early with iphone update which im sure has something to do with it. Can I try on load via my 2 install discs, at what stage can i insert them etc - thanks and sorry for all silly questions...
 
mac2thefuture said:
I pressed option and got Mac HDD and Windows disc. Mac wouldn't load and sent me back to hard restart, Windows did work.
As for hardware I played around too early with iphone update which im sure has something to do with it. Can I try on load via my 2 install discs, at what stage can i insert them etc - thanks and sorry for all silly questions...
Click to expand...

If you cannot boot into anything try to hold the option key and while the drives are showing up try to insert the disks. I believe a disc will go in at this point. Then I would restart the computer and hold the option key down again and wait until the OSX install disc shows up. Then select this one and boot from it.
 
I can get to disk Utility via the Insatll Disc 1. When I veryfy Mac HD i get red errors stating invalid node structure, the volume macintosh needs repairing.
The underlying task reported failure on exit. 1 HFS volume checked, volume needs repair
When i go to repair disk i get a red error stating invalid volume header, 1 volume could not be repaired because of an error.
:confused::(
 
mac2thefuture said:
Is it worth me erasing / restoring this HDD from disk utility??
Click to expand...

Well I'm not sure if you should do that yet. Try to do some research on google about fixing kernel panic on a mac. If disk utility is popping up errors then it could possibly be your HDD causing the problem. I'm assuming you are using leopard so if you had time machine turned on and have backup up recently then I would go ahead and erase, re-install OSX, and restore your information with the time machine drive. If this doesn't fix the problem then it has to be something else with your hardware. If you try this report back with what happens.
 
mac2thefuture said:
I'm on Tiger, no Time Machine.....:(
Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I thought when I heard "two disks." Umm you would have to make an image of your disk and then restore it after you erase the disk i guess. But I don't know if this would just restore the same old problems you had before you erased the disk. If you have an external HD i would try to make an image of the disk and then erase/restore the disk image with disk utility.
 
Even if I try and boot from install disks it wont find the Mac HDD as a location to do the install ( it does show my ext HDD and a windows partition). I can get to disc utility - shall I erase?

Thanks
 
mac2thefuture said:
Even if I try and boot from install disks it wont find the Mac HDD as a location to do the install ( it does show my ext HDD and a windows partition). I can get to disc utility - shall I erase?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Well, you are going to lose all your data in the process. Did you make a disk image of the osx HDD? I guess after you erase restore the disk from that image. Copy the image to an external hd if you can. I'm pretty sure an erase will get you up and running, but what I'm not sure is how you are going to recover your data.
 
mac2thefuture said:
Thanks for your help, how do i copy an image?
Click to expand...

Go to disk utility. select your osx drive from the left and choose new image at the top, then tell it to save to your external hd. After it completes this process you should be able to erase the drive, and then go under the restore option on the drive and select the disk image you made before. It will then restore the disk image to the disk. After this, try to boot up from the OSX drive and see if there is a kernel panic again. If there is, i think your best bet is to take it into an apple store if there is one near you.
 
Mac OSX Unsuspectedly Quit?

Wow, i was watching a video on youtube, while using ichat
and this pops up on my screen

problemw.jpg

and i couldnt click anything at all so of course i turned it off by holding the
power button

so then i waited a bit and turned it back on
and this popped up
problem2u.jpg


any ideas of why this occurred?
 
touchdownjesus4 said:
Go to disk utility. select your osx drive from the left and choose new image at the top, then tell it to save to your external hd. After it completes this process you should be able to erase the drive, and then go under the restore option on the drive and select the disk image you made before. It will then restore the disk image to the disk. After this, try to boot up from the OSX drive and see if there is a kernel panic again. If there is, i think your best bet is to take it into an apple store if there is one near you.
Click to expand...

Does capacity play a part here? My Mac HDD is at approx 200Gig, the available space left on my ext HDD is approx 80 Gig.
 
touchdownjesus4 said:
Go to disk utility. select your osx drive from the left and choose new image at the top, then tell it to save to your external hd. After it completes this process you should be able to erase the drive, and then go under the restore option on the drive and select the disk image you made before. It will then restore the disk image to the disk. After this, try to boot up from the OSX drive and see if there is a kernel panic again. If there is, i think your best bet is to take it into an apple store if there is one near you.
Click to expand...

OK, done the first part, made an image. When you say erase the drive, do you mean the new image drive or the orriginal drive?
When you say restore the drive, again do you mean the image or the orriginal
Thanks
 
mac2thefuture said:
OK, done the first part, made an image. When you say erase the drive, do you mean the new image drive or the orriginal drive?
When you say restore the drive, again do you mean the image or the orriginal
Thanks
Click to expand...

Erase the original drive by going under the erase tab and selecting Erase and then make sure its formatted to Mac OSX Extended (Journaled). Then after that is done go under the restore tab and where it says "image" select the image you made that is now on your external hd. For the destination, drag your original osx volume from the left to there (the one you just erased). Then click restore. This should restore your whole system from that disk image you made.

After you are done with that. Quit disk utility and go to "startup disk." Select your osx volume and restart. It hopefully should start up fine and all your files should be intact.
 
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