My imac (24-inch Early 2008) is not completing the boot process. After the apple appears and then the "working" pinwheel has spun for a while, the pinwheel stops and never recovers, forcing me to do a hard shutdown. Below I'll list what i have tried and what was the result.
-- My first thought was that it was the HD. It's always the HD, you know? Well, I replaced the hard drive and we're still having the same issue
-- I've tried booting from an external HD, a usb drive and the install disk. Displays the same behavior for all (NOTE: these are all snow leopard. I'm going to partition my usb key with lion to see if i get any further, but I don't expect any change).
-- Attempted to boot in safe mode (CMD Shift):
-- --Displays apple screen with the progress bar
-- --fills the bar about 30%
-- --bar disappears and is replaced with spinning gear
-- --gear freezes, no boot
-- pulled and re-set ram in slots (not original RAM, but replaced w Kingston RAM when I got the machine in early 2008, and there have been no probs until now)
-- PRAM Reset: CMD + option + P + R
-- SMC Reset: Unplugged for 15 seconds, plug and wait for 5 seconds, press power
-- Unplug for 15 seconds, hold power button while plugging in, release power button, press power to turn on (Some other variation of reset I found out there, don't remember what they said it was for)
I've tried starting in verbose mode, and it seems to stop in roughly the same place no matter what I'm trying. The same place being the initialization of the network cards. Even tho' verbose says it logs to /dev/console/ there is nothing in that directory for whichever boot drive I'm using (yes, I looked in hidden files). So, I hand copied the last few lines in my latest attempt:
yukon: Ethernet address BLAH BLAH
Airport_Brem43xx : Ethernet address BLAH BLAH
IO80211Controller:: dataLinkLayerAttachComplete () adding AppleEFINVRAM notification
Airport: Link Down on en1. Reason 1 (unspecified)
I have had some verbose logs stopping after "yukon: Ethernet address", as well as other lines that all seem to be related to either one of the network cards.
I've seen some posts listing those lines from error logs, etc., but they all seemed to be issues with slowing and poor performance (which my mac had displayed prior to death). The solutions, if any, don't really apply to me since I can't boot at all.
I've got to get this puppy up and running for the start of school in a week. HELP!
Please don't make me go to genius bar!
juliana
P.S. I should note that the OS is not yet installed on the internal drive. After I replaced the drive, I figured I'd boot off the install disk and install then. Do you think it's worth opening it up again, take out the drive, install OSX from one of my other machines, then reinstall? It's an imac, so it's a bit involved. But I can't imagine it would be any different than trying to boot from an external, right?
-- My first thought was that it was the HD. It's always the HD, you know? Well, I replaced the hard drive and we're still having the same issue
-- I've tried booting from an external HD, a usb drive and the install disk. Displays the same behavior for all (NOTE: these are all snow leopard. I'm going to partition my usb key with lion to see if i get any further, but I don't expect any change).
-- Attempted to boot in safe mode (CMD Shift):
-- --Displays apple screen with the progress bar
-- --fills the bar about 30%
-- --bar disappears and is replaced with spinning gear
-- --gear freezes, no boot
-- pulled and re-set ram in slots (not original RAM, but replaced w Kingston RAM when I got the machine in early 2008, and there have been no probs until now)
-- PRAM Reset: CMD + option + P + R
-- SMC Reset: Unplugged for 15 seconds, plug and wait for 5 seconds, press power
-- Unplug for 15 seconds, hold power button while plugging in, release power button, press power to turn on (Some other variation of reset I found out there, don't remember what they said it was for)
I've tried starting in verbose mode, and it seems to stop in roughly the same place no matter what I'm trying. The same place being the initialization of the network cards. Even tho' verbose says it logs to /dev/console/ there is nothing in that directory for whichever boot drive I'm using (yes, I looked in hidden files). So, I hand copied the last few lines in my latest attempt:
yukon: Ethernet address BLAH BLAH
Airport_Brem43xx : Ethernet address BLAH BLAH
IO80211Controller:: dataLinkLayerAttachComplete () adding AppleEFINVRAM notification
Airport: Link Down on en1. Reason 1 (unspecified)
I have had some verbose logs stopping after "yukon: Ethernet address", as well as other lines that all seem to be related to either one of the network cards.
I've seen some posts listing those lines from error logs, etc., but they all seemed to be issues with slowing and poor performance (which my mac had displayed prior to death). The solutions, if any, don't really apply to me since I can't boot at all.
I've got to get this puppy up and running for the start of school in a week. HELP!
Please don't make me go to genius bar!
juliana
P.S. I should note that the OS is not yet installed on the internal drive. After I replaced the drive, I figured I'd boot off the install disk and install then. Do you think it's worth opening it up again, take out the drive, install OSX from one of my other machines, then reinstall? It's an imac, so it's a bit involved. But I can't imagine it would be any different than trying to boot from an external, right?