Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Stuck at the Grey Screen of Death

S

Shockley

macrumors newbie
Original poster
So I've got this huge problem... About two weeks ago I'm using my snow leopard partition of my macbook pro and browsing the internet via firefox. My mouse freezes for a second, and then my computer just shuts down. I power back up my macbook pro to find a 'cancel or prohibitory symbol'. Strange thing is I can hold down option and boot into my windows partition no problem I go through all the motions suggested by the apple website, such as resetting the PRAM etc.. Nothing works.

Flash forward to today. I finally get a hold of my snow leopard installation disc and boot my macbook with it. I run the disk utility and it finds that my hard drive's good to go. I read online and it seems that the best option would be to install snow leopard again. I decide install it again, but about halfway through the installation, the installation fails and pretty much freezes. I had to shut down the macbook via the power button. Now, whenever i try to boot up my macbook I hear the chime, but nothing happens after that. I am just left with a grey screen. I cannot enter safe mode, single user mode, and when I try to choose the start up disk by holding down option, the arrow pops up to choose which disk to pick, but there are no disks to choose from.

Sorry for the long message, but I just wanted to type everything out so there are no misunderstandings. I've got a final on wednesday and I have a good bit of material on the macbook that I need to prepare myself for this test. Any help would be appreciated!
 
Experienced this twice - once with my own Mac and once on my father's. Bad news is we needed to trash the Hitachi hard drives since the problem rooted from them. Tell me, when you get to the grey screen does the computer become extremely hot after sometime ?
 
Do you have a backup?

Do you have access to another Mac? If so I'd try connecting it via target disk mode to see if you can recover any of your stuff. Seems like you went through the standard suggestions, at this point you're looking at needing a replacement hard drive.
 
miles01110 said:
Do you have a backup?

Do you have access to another Mac? If so I'd try connecting it via target disk mode to see if you can recover any of your stuff. Seems like you went through the standard suggestions, at this point you're looking at needing a replacement hard drive.
Click to expand...

Unfortunatetly I do not have back up of any sort. It's times like this that make you realize how useful time machine + an external hard drive can be.

I do have access to a mac, however. I'm posting on a family members macbook right now. I've read about the target disk mode before. Do I need to use a firewire cable, or would a USB cable be acceptable too?

Gorilla Power said:
Experienced this twice - once with my own Mac and once on my father's. Bad news is we needed to trash the Hitachi hard drives since the problem rooted from them. Tell me, when you get to the grey screen does the computer become extremely hot after sometime ?
Click to expand...

Yeah I just felt the computer and it's burning up.
 
Shockley said:
Unfortunatetly I do not have back up of any sort. It's times like this that make you realize how useful time machine + an external hard drive can be.

I do have access to a mac, however. I'm posting on a family members macbook right now. I've read about the target disk mode before. Do I need to use a firewire cable, or would a USB cable be acceptable too?



Yeah I just felt the computer and it's burning up.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure about the USB option, but Firewire works fine with Target Disk Mode. That is assuming your HDD is fine. Firewire is also faster than a USB transfer.
 
Okay I'm gonna have to run out and grab a firewire cable then. I just have to hold down t once I boot the messed up computer, right?
 
agentphish said:
your hard drive is certainly toast. sorry to say. Target is your only chance.
Click to expand...

This.

I experienced the GSOD earlier this month and lost all my work related documents (resumes, cover letters, etc etc) and all of my notes and homework for this quarter (THANK GOD I had just finished midterms or I would have been screwed). I just bought myself a new MBP since I was planning on it in June anyways.

tldr; backup your info or suffer horrible experiences like me.
 
If you are able to connect via target disk, I would back everything up and reformat with disk utility from your other computer.
 
Well you did say you started to reinstall the OS from the CD, so there is a chance that your data is already gone if it got that far into the install before you powered off.

If you have access to another computer with the same RAM, try taking yours out and replacing it. While its unlikely, bad RAM can cause your computer to stick at the grey screen.
 
Yeah I did reinstall, but it recognized that snow leopard was already installed and it was just doing a repair.
 
Rithem said:
This.

... and lost all my work related documents (resumes, cover letters, etc etc) and all of my notes and homework for this quarter (THANK GOD I had just finished midterms or I would have been screwed).
Click to expand...

Makes me wonder why on God's green earth didn't you back your data up ? 😱 I always have two backups of my disk and an offsite, weekly clone of my drive in case an earth quake crushes everything I have.
 
Gorilla Power said:
Makes me wonder why on God's green earth didn't you back your data up ? 😱 I always have two backups of my disk and an offsite, weekly clone of my drive in case an earth quake crushes everything I have.
Click to expand...

I tried to when I found out my HDD was failing but time machine's backups weren't working... and it died in the middle of a backup. So... fml?
 
Sorry to hear your HD died... just run target mode and try to recover your info.

WD scorpio blue drives are good, and affordable. I think newegg has the 640Gb at about 80 bucks.

Make yourself a favor and get 2, 1 for your MBP and one for backup...
 
Just to see if it would work, I put snow leopard on an external hard drive with a GUID partition and tried to boot my macbook pro with it. And wouldn't you have it, didn't work. I held down option after the chime on the start up and I got to the screen with the arrow to let me pick which disk I wanted to boot, but there were no options. Does this mean anything more serious than my hard drive is messed up??
 
Guys,

I have the same problem. After reading all your posts here, I bought myself a brand new WD 7200rpm hard drive. I installed it but the problem's still there.

Any other solution please. It will start in my Snow L DVD but when I start to format the disk using Disk Utility, GSOD occurs.

I just have my videocard replaced by an apple store gs 1 month ago.

Sometimes I'm getting a purple screen. sometimes dark grey.

Please help... I don't want to rest my iMac(2000$+) to the graveyard. It's a big lost for me.

What else can I do guyz?

I hope it's not the logic board.

vinz
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back