Yes, we all know that there’s the almighty Blue Screen of Death for Windows. Well, the macs got their own not so mighty Grey Screen of Death – with or without spinning wheel.
I got the GSOD with the spinning wheel. And btw, the spinning wheel here is not the beach ball of death but this:
It’s last night at around 10pm or so. Was so glad that I could be back home so early after having dinner with friends. Switched on my iMac – usually it takes a minute or so to boot up but this time… just stuck on the grey screen. The normal sequence is: grey screen with apple logo and spinning wheel, then a very brief moment with a pure blue screen, then wall paper will pop up and startup items start loading, then it’s up and running. But last night, it’s just grey screen forever. Got stuck!
Tried switching off and on for a few times, no luck. Then got online with my little apple (i.e. my ipod touch) and googled something like “apple grey screen forever". Voila! got related posts in several mac forum and a repair suggestion from Apple support pages as well. Then came the supposedly-not-so-lengthy process of repairing and recovering the system.
1) insert OS X install DVD before restart.
2) restart Mac while holding C down to boot up with optical drive.
3) Choose preferred language on menu then on next page, go for “utility -> disc utility" on top menu bar.
4) in Disc Utility, choose First Aid -> Repair Disc (then just let it run. if something’s wrong, it’ll repair it)
5) Repair Permissions (again, just let it run.)
If repair is successful, then may just restart and see if it boots up. Obviously the repair wasn’t successful in my case…
6a) If time machine has got the latest backup, then just go ahead to reinstall OS X and restore from time machine on the OS X DVD screen menu.
And obviously… my laziness results in a time machine with a backup from like almost a month back… so…
6b) Get another mac computer (macbook in my case), connect it with the mac in coma (iMac here) with a firewire cable. On macbook, go to “application -> migration assistant". Just follow the steps in migration assistant, then you may have everything in iMac migrated to the macbook. (I have two accounts on my iMac but I only wanted to migrate one of them. However, I checked the wrong box and thus migrated the wrong account. I was about to click “reinstall OS X" on my iMac but suddenly thought of checking if the migration was right, then found out my stupid mistake. Then migrated again… but the account I wanna migrate is bigger than the hard disc on my macbook. So, I had to delete some files on my iMac first – oh my! there’re so many useless files in my iMac =P Anyways…)
7) Migration done. Restart iMac (remember to hold C down on boot up), and reinstall OS X (btw, make sure you have the install disc of the current version, not previous versions). Choose ERASE AND INSTALL so that you may have a clean drive. (Some suggested to first use disc utility to zero out the HD before installing. I didn’t have the patience to do that. btw, zero out means a complete erase. It’s the second tap in disc utility.) Let installation run – this may take 30 minutes to an hour. I didn’t time it.
8 ) Answer the questions on screen (only a few) then choose to migrate files from older mac when it asks about it. Choose the account that you wish to migrate back. Migration done, OS X running.
9) Run Software Update (under apple menu)
10) iMac revived!
It took me a whole night to recover my iMac. If I had done time machine back up frequent enough, should have saved myself the 2-3 hours I wasted on migrating back and forth between two macs. Then the time required for the whole repair should be around 1.5 hours.
25 留言
Comments feed for this article
31 七月, 2009 於 7:49 上午
bill
Joanna,
if you’ve ever wondered if your posts ever helped someone out, let me just say for the record… YES! HOLY FREAKING CRAP, YES! You just bailed my old mac out of the fire. Thanks so much for helping me out with my “grey screen of death"!
Sincerely,
Bill
21 一月, 2010 於 8:53 上午
Cesar
I agree with the Bill, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
26 二月, 2010 於 2:10 下午
allison
you might have saved my life & sanity tonight. Thank you.
26 二月, 2010 於 2:29 下午
joannalaforet
I’m happy that this post has saved some of you out there. It nearly drove me insane when it happened to me, so I really know how you felt when you saw it got stuck on grey screen 🙂
12 四月, 2010 於 4:05 上午
john
Tremendous help! Saved my bacon.
THANKS!
5 十二月, 2010 於 12:15 下午
stevie
This sorted me out, you are an F-ing champion!
25 十二月, 2010 於 10:13 上午
Josh
just got a cirgle with a slash through it on what I thought was a Grey Screen of Death. What do I go?
25 十二月, 2010 於 10:13 上午
Josh
sorry, what do I do?
10 三月, 2011 於 4:00 下午
Jess
what do i do if i dont have the disc?
10 三月, 2011 於 10:56 下午
joannalaforet
Go borrow one from friend/relative/whoever… you NEED the disk! (You don’t have the “recovery" disk?)
12 三月, 2011 於 12:46 下午
kennabah
Thank you so much! This helped me amazingly! I was using the wrong dvd for the installation and it finally worked!
Thank you a million times over. I thought my mac was gone for good
27 四月, 2011 於 11:53 下午
Dusty
I still have the screen of death, it will not let me verify my permissions. The wording stays grey. I do not have the firewire adapters for the IMAC or MAC Book pro. So if there is anything else i can do to resolve this issue, please let me know and it is greatly appreciated ahead of time.
19 五月, 2011 於 1:58 上午
joannalaforet
Oops, somehow your comment never reached my mailbox and I rarely checks the dashboard here in WP… and hence the delay in reply. I hope you’ve sorted out the problem. If not, try getting a USB-Firewire adaptor / hub so that you may at least connect your iMac / MBP as target disk and retrieve data / files.
17 五月, 2011 於 11:22 下午
Hanban
What happens if I never activated the Time Machine on my Mac? All the files would be forever gone? :((
17 五月, 2011 於 11:38 下午
joannalaforet
Go for step 6b above. If your Mac won’t even boot up as remote harddisk, then it’s probably not a OS problem but a hardware problem.
7 六月, 2011 於 4:33 上午
Lauren
THANK YOU!!! it’s loading the software now, do you know if you lose your files? i don’t have time machine…
9 六月, 2011 於 11:49 下午
joannalaforet
If you don’t have time machine, then I guess you either take it to an Apple store and ask the genius to transfer all you files out to an external hd; or connect your grey-screened Mac as target disk to another Mac (if you don’t have a 2nd Mac, borrow one from your friends/family) and take all the files out.
(But since you said it’s already loading software… I guess it’s a bit late to do anything now…)
12 六月, 2011 於 2:03 上午
Hanban
It’s me again. And maybe out of fear I still haven’t fixed the GSOD with my hard drive. Been using the original hard drive on my Mac. My question is this: would it be okay to transfer my pictures from iPhoto ’09 to iPhoto ’11? 😦
12 六月, 2011 於 3:40 上午
joannalaforet
My pictures from iPhoto ’09 were fine after upgrading to iPhoto ’11 though… I’d still recommend a backup. Can you boot your Mac as target disc? (Steps as follows:
1. Switch off your GSOD Mac (If it’s a MB, switch it off but plug in the AC power adapter).
2. Connect your Mac to another mac with FireWire (If your Mac has no FW port, try using a USB -> FW adapter)
3. **Switch on your Mac and immediately PRESS & HOLD the “T" key until you see a big FW icon on the screen.
4. You should now see your GSOD Mac in Finder on the other Mac. Move your precious files/photos to the other Mac…)
27 十二月, 2011 於 3:59 上午
michaelfmorrissey
Hi Joanna,
How did you delete so many useless files carefully?
I’m having trouble finding a way of doing it quickly without downloading a software that’s known to be a virus..
Please help!
27 十二月, 2011 於 5:11 上午
joannalaforet
Last modified / open date is a good hint of telling how useful the files are. Of course, a good filing system is also a must.
In my case, since I had a backup until a month before the incident, I just had to make sure I got the files made within thy month are transferred. So, that’s relatively easy to find the files I need to keep and the ones I can let go without regret.
4 二月, 2012 於 11:55 下午
ASirInNameOnly
My goodness Joanna, thank you so very much for your post! A pure lifesaver you are?
12 二月, 2012 於 9:09 上午
Joe
I’m stuck at the Grey screen but I can’t even see the Apple logo..Thoughts?
12 二月, 2012 於 3:00 下午
joannalaforet
Hmm…can still try to go through the whole process described here. This is actually just a guide to a clean reinstall of Mac OS. REMEMBER TO BACKUP first. (Boot up as remote disk is very useful here.)
If reinstallation of Mac OS doesn’t work for your Mac, then your Mac may have hardware problem. If so unfortunate that you run into such problem, I hope you have bought AppleCare. My friend’s Mac just got a dead LCD panel and logic board. Had she not bought AppleCare, the repair would have cost her ~USD1500!
8 五月, 2012 於 3:30 上午
skylarkingzooby
Thanks for this Joanna! It’ll probably take all night (it’s jumped from 6 hours to 5 while I’m typing this) but it’s better than nothing! I had to borrow a friend’s dvd as I don’t have my own but it seems to be working! What a star