Stuck at the spinning wheel/grey screen!! Help please

[jmdMac]

So all of the sudden my mbp will not boot past the spinning wheel/apple screen. I have not let it try for longer than 15 minutes but I don't see the point. I tried to boot in safe mode(hold down shift) but the bar only went to about 1/3 and stopped/disappeared...so I don't know what to do. This shouldn't be happening after a couple months of light use.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.


Before anyone asks, yes I did search for my answer. This is the closest/most recent thread with a related problem(https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/860632/), however it was never answered....

Just for extra info:
I am able to boot into windows 7 via boot camp.
Cannot boot from cd or go into safe mode.

 

[jmdMac]

shameless bump....still spinning wheel and grey screen


Finally booted up. Took roughly an hour, not acceptable by any means.

Anyone know a fix????

 

[d88co88]

Finally booted up. Took roughly an hour, not acceptable by any means. Anyone know a fix????

Sounds to me like a dying hard drive. I suggest replacing it yourself unless you just got it.

 

[jmdMac]

Sounds to me like a dying hard drive. I suggest replacing it yourself unless you just got it.

Just got it. Not the hard drive. Ran disk utility and the hard drive seems to be fine.

Everything was running suuuper slow when it finally booted up and the dock was reset to the original default.

I am currently reinstalling OS X from the dvd right now. I'll report back with results.

 

[TopHatPlus]

that is quite interesting. my 2007 macbook empty boots in 26 seconds, and with all my stuff about 36 seconds, so 1 hour defs not acceptable, it sounds like there may be a hard drive issue, its the only disk in the machine that can be on off really. hmmm once oyu get it re formatted if it still has that issue then take it in and get it looked at yo should be beating my old macbook for boot up =D