525iSE

My iMac Intel loads only until the log in screen, but not even to the list of users, only says, Starting Mac OS X, then the blue progress bar fill up and its stays there for a very long time, I've left it for over 3 horus now, and its still there, the mouse is moving around and everything, but it won't progress any further. Any idea how I can get it to work again? I'm using my PowerBook right now, but really want to get back to my iMac, please help me out. I've tried resetting PRAM and SMC, still no progress beyond that point. Also does anyone know what VERBOSE mode and Single-User mode is? I also tried booting into Safe Mode, but it just turns off.

nickolas_g

Zapping the PRAM is no longer needed and does not really do anything. Back in the OS9 days it did. Depending on the age of the Mac it may have the bad capacitors. I would suggest taking it to your local Apple store or a Mac reseller for repair.

I used to work for Apple.

Or you can do this. Borrow someone's Mac and put your iMac into target disk mode. Do this by holding down the 'T' key at startup. you will see a blue background with a yellow 'firewire' logo flash on the screen. You can then take a firewire cord connect it to the other Mac and it will show up as a hard drive on the other Mac.

Go into Disk Utility and perform a Disk Repair on your Mac. If It cannot fix your hard drive, then you really need to go get it repaired.

Thats what I would do.

swajames

You can boot up from your OS X install CD and run disk utility from there (insert the CD on power-up or before power down and hold the "c" key when the mac runs through the startup checks). You should be able run disk utility that way if you prefer.

A better plan B might be to boot up in single user mode (press and hold "command-s" on startup) and run the "fsck" utility from the command line. To run fsck (which is the Unix application that disk install runs under the hood) type /sbin/fsck -fy. Try running it a couple of times, even if it reports no errors, then type reboot at the command line to restart the machine and (hopefully) reboot from the hard drive.

Zapping PRAM and NVRAM again probably won't hurt - there are errors that it does seem to fix, even in OS X. You can do this from the command line or on startup:

Reboot the machine whilst holding Command-Option-P-R until you hear the startup chime for a second time, your Mac should then continue to boot as normal but you may need to reset some settings (date, time etc)

Be careful with the above, it's possible to do a lot of damage from the command line in single user mode, but good luck and keep us posted.

Simple1

you should do everything said above, those are pretty much the steps I would also take if I were in the same situation. Running disk utility from your main install CD is probably your best bet though as it unmounts the main HD rather than running in target disk mode which only verifies the disk rather than the permissions which should be the cause of the problem. Launchd which controls all of the startup process seems to be running fine but since you can't even boot into safe mode it's definitely a permissions issue. Also have you recently installed any new applications that you think needs a process to begin during startup?

525iSE

i have just installed Azureus, bittorent client program, because I download anime. Umm, now it won't even boot to the log in screen anymore, it just boots into a blue background, and thats it. i tried to repair the disk using the disk utility by booting from the restore CD, but it said, error, the disk cannot be repaired or something to that extent. Damn iMac Intel, piss me off. Had my powerbook for over 2 years now, and not even a problem.

swajames

2 final suggestions. Try booting up whilst holding down the shift key, it loads OSX without extensions and may help you get past the boot errors you get right now. The other thing to try is to boot in verbose mode by holding CMD and V at startup, this bypasses the graphical interface at startup and you will be able to see what processes the machine is initiating and thus what specific process it is stalling on. If you can see that report back and maybe someone can help.

By the way, did you try booting in single user mode and running fsck from the command line? That's definitely worth a try if you haven't already.

Beyond that, unless you can get your hands on Tech Tools or Disk Warrior you may indeed need to get the machine back to Apple. Good luck.

UUronL

Verbose mode is going to give you a line by line loading status... much like any Linux or Unix OS would give you (and how NeXTSTEP does it). Try enabling that, and then report back where it's hanging - I might be able to help you.


The manual fsck from single user mode was a good suggestion too - that was something I was going to recommend.


Again, set it to boot in verbose mode, and report back.

525iSE

Nothing seems to work. Even fsck from single user mode also doesnt work. Can't repair disk or something. When in verbose mode, it says 14 failures, 10 major 4 minor, etc, and it keeps counting down then when it gets to 3 failures, the whole computer just reboots and thats it.

UUronL

It would be helpful if you could report what items it is failing on.

If it is scrolling past too quickly, boot into single user mode, execute the dmesg command (but I think this will only show the bootup messages for single user mode if that's how you booted) so you may have to mount the main partition and tail the /var/log or /var/adm messages file. Not entirely sure where it would log to exactly... don't have a Mac to look at presently. You could look in the /etc/syslog.conf file to see the file's exact location.


Are you using any command switches when you execute fsck? Is it prompting you interactively to correct any issues?