Mac startup problems snow leopard

Drive permission issues are likely causing the problem

This is normally exhibited by the startup hanging at the default grey screen, preventing OS X from booting. By launching into Safe Boot Mode via holding down the Shift key during startup, your Mac forces a directory check of the startup volume and only launches the bare minimum of kernel extensions, fonts and startup items required, so as to avoid any that may be causing problems and allow for easier identification.

Of course, safe Boot Mode also enables you to make changes to prevent problems when booting your Mac in the future. If you have a disc in your drive that is refusing to eject, restart your computer and hold down the mouse button as soon as you hear the startup chime. This should eject your disc while your Mac starts up.

If you're having trouble with your hard drive and need to boot your Mac from a different drive or disc, hold down the Option key during startup to open the Startup Manager, which will enable you to select a different volume. To boot up your Mac from an install disc or other bootable CD or DVD, insert the disc and then hold down the C key while the computer starts up.


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Your Mac will then look for and boot from the disc. Holding T during startup will tell your Mac to mount its drive on the desktop of a host computer connected via FireWire cable. This can be used to copy files between Macs or for troubleshooting a disc fault. Sometimes you may need to start your Mac in Verbose mode to show all system messages normally hidden during startup.

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Back to School Single User Mode Single User Mode bypasses a number of standard elements of Mac OS X and puts the user straight into the console where they can make changes using command line utilities. Another startup problem that's mistaken for the gray screen issue is a gray screen with a folder icon and a flashing question mark. That's a separate problem, which is easy to fix with the help of our troubleshooting guide.

Disconnect all external peripherals , and keep them removed for the duration of these steps unless otherwise noted. Don't disconnect the keyboard , mouse, or display.

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If your keyboard or mouse is connected through a USB hub, bypass the hub by plugging the keyboard and mouse directly into your Mac for these tests. One of the most common problems that can cause the gray screen issue is a bad peripheral or peripheral cable. When a bad peripheral is plugged into your Mac, it can prevent it from continuing the startup sequence, and cause it to stall while it waits for the peripheral to respond to a command. The most common form of this is when a bad peripheral or its cable causes one of the signaling pins on one of Mac's ports to get stuck in one condition set high, set low, or shorted out to ground or positive voltage.

Any of these conditions can cause your Mac to freeze during the startup process. If your Mac starts back up without issue, then you'll know that it's a problem with a peripheral. You'll need to shut your Mac back down, reconnect one peripheral, and then restart your Mac. Continue this process of reconnecting one peripheral at a time and then restarting your Mac until you find the bad peripheral. Remember that the problem can also be a bad cable, so if you plug a peripheral back in and it causes the gray screen issue, try the peripheral with a new cable before you replace the peripheral.

Swap your mouse and keyboard with a known good pair, and then restart your Mac. If you don't have spares, just disconnect them and restart by pressing and holding the power key. If your Mac gets to the login screen or desktop, then you'll need to determine whether the problem is the mouse or the keyboard. Try plugging in one at a time and then restarting to confirm. Start your Mac using the Safe Boot process if no peripheral or cable appears to be at fault. To do that, first disconnect all of the peripherals, except the mouse and keyboard. During the Safe Boot, your Mac performs a directory check of your startup drive.

If the drive directory is intact, the OS continues the startup process by loading only the minimum number of kernel extensions it needs to boot.

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If your Mac successfully starts up in Safe Boot mode, try restarting your Mac again in normal mode. If your Mac starts and makes it to the login screen or the desktop, then verify that your startup drive is working correctly. Chances are the drive has some issues that need to be repaired. You can use Disk Utility's First Aid tools to check and repair your drive; you may even need to replace the drive. For instance, sound levels are set to the default, the internal speakers are set as the source of audio output, and the display options and brightness reset.

If it comes on normally, reattach your peripherals one at a time, restarting the Mac after each, to verify that none of them caused the original gray screen issue. Remove all but the minimum amount of RAM from your Mac.

If it does, then one or more pieces of RAM have failed, and you'll need to replace it. However, you should be able to continue working with your Mac until you get the replacement RAM. Unfortunately, we're getting to the point where the troubleshooting steps will likely cause you to lose some, if not all, of the data on your startup drive. So, before we go there, be sure to try this RAM fix first.

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Repair the startup drive by booting to external media, like an install disk. This verifies if the startup drive is having problems. Start from the Recovery HD :. If at this point you successfully started your Mac but the repair process didn't work, the startup drive may need to be replaced, which involves reinstalling the entire operating system.