<p>Before I spend all Sunday afternoon on the phone with Apple support, does anyone have any suggested strategies for me to try?</p>
<p>I was online yesterday (a different computer than the one I’m at right now), when suddenly my cursor disappeared and the basketball game streaming video I was watching froze. Nothing responded to any clicks or keystrokes, so I turned off the machine, waited 20 seconds and turned it back on. I got the Apple logo on the gray screen and nothing else - no log-in, no dock on the screen, just the logo. I tried restarting a couple more times and got a black rectangle with white text telling me I needed to restart my computer. Tried control-alt-delete several times, nothing, cut it off and waited, turned it back on - it still only shows the apple anytime I switch it on.</p>
<p>When my PC (not Mac) does that I can sometimes fix it by removing the power pack to make sure the computer is completely dead. This disengages it from from any and all loops it has gotten itself stuck in. I then put the power pack back in and fire it up.</p>
<p>Don’t know if it would work for a Mac, but it’s worth a try.</p>
<p>Sorry, I don’t know how to help. Question: Do you have windows installed via bootcamp partition? Son called from college last week in a panic with similar issues on his Macbook. Somehow, he managed to remove windows by getting rid of the partition and restoring it back to one OSX partition. He said it’s been working fine ever since.</p>
<p>Yes, I have both the Mac OS and Windows on it and I’ve tried holding down the Option key when rebooting, but I just get a blank screen. To disconnect the “power pack” would I just unplug every cable that’s plugged into the computer?</p>
<p>gadad, I just tried calling son to get the specific details from him but as with most college students on a Sunday at 11:00am–he’s still sleeping and not answering his phone yet. When he called last week, he said that he couldn’t boot up his macbook in either OSX or Windows (the laptop is less than a year old). Then he said that eventually it boot up to a certain point where he could get to the bootcamp application. He used that to get rid of the windows partition (and Windows vista) and it’s been working ever since-----booting up fine. </p>
<p>Maybe son will call back. If so, I’ll ask him for the details.</p>
<p>If you have an install system disk on CD, you can force your Mac to boot from that. I believe the command is to push “C” or maybe command-C during startup, but you can check on that. It doesn’t matter if it’s an old system; you just want to see if the Mac can boot at all. If you have the current system install disk with Disk First Aid or some similar utility on it, you can run that on your hard drive if you can boot off the CD and see if you can fix the hard drive.</p>
<p>gadad, I’m having that problem w/ my new iMac. Unplug everything – especially the power cord from the back of the unit, wait a minute, restart w/ just keyboard, mouse & power (duh!) attached. Problem I’m having is the white blank screen comes up every time I restart. They said to reinstall the system software using “archive & install”, you’ll need the disks that came with the computer. Look up directions online before you do it (and it takes a long time). This is something you don’t want to screw up! It’s easy enough, but if you’re unsure and under warranty you can take it to the Apple Store and they’ll do it.</p>
<p>Also, if you haven’t already, invest in an external hard drive (you can find them pretty cheap these days) and set up Time Machine to do automatic backups. I sure wouldn’t do a reinstall if I didn’t have the safety of a backup.</p>
<p>We are lucky enough to have a couple of Apple stores within a short drive. They will check to see if they can get it to boot. Make an appointment for the Genius Bar on line. If you do not have apple store nearby, I would call support or look up on line data base.</p>
<p>I just re-read your op. This looks like it may be kernel panic. I killed my last computer trying to fix it. This may be one for the pros. If I had reinstalled my system software when I first got the black “restart” rectangle it might have been okay. The old mac was on it’s last legs anyway so it was a nice excuse for a new one ;-))</p>
<p>I had the same thing as you, got it to restart and it was stable for a week. I should have reinstalled the system software right away. By the time I got to it, it would have errors trying to reinstall from the disks (which may be because my cd drive was also failing). It was time to shoot it and put it out of its misery. It was old and not worth paying someone to figure it out.</p>
<p>gadad, you still may not be out of the woods. Like I said, the same thing happened to me and the system was stable for a week, then POOF! nothing would work. Have a backup in place on an external drive. Seriously consider doing an “archive & install” from your CD/DVD. Personally, I’ve never had zapping the PRAM fix anything, but it’s easy enough to try. There’s a reason why this happened. Are you by chance running Bootcamp? I’ve heard that’s problematic. Maybe the reset fixed the problem. Maybe not…</p>
<p>originaloog I think that enough bad stuff is used in the manufacture of electronics, adding nuclear waste to the mix, is more than adding insult to injury wouldnt you agree?</p>
<p>You guys are killing my perception of the Mac as a trouble free computer compared to my Windows computer. Is it just the iMac that is problematic or does this problem occur on the other computers in the Apple line?</p>
<p>Had the same issue twice with our IMac that we just purchased at Christmas. Pulling the power cord and plugging it back in did the trick.</p>
<p>Ellemenope, don’t worry - this is a trivial concern compared to all of the very good things that Apples do. We’ve owned two decades’ worth of Gateways, Dells, HPs, Toshibas and the like and in the 2 months we’ve owned the IMac, I will NEVER own another brand of computer again. It is so much better for daily family use for my husband and myself, and not dealing with all of the grinding startup and the viruses is such a welcome relief. The commands take a while to get used to after a lifetime of Windows-based operations, but everything runs so much faster and smoother once you get the hang of it. Plus, for customer attention and knowledge (in most cases), you can’t beat an Apple Store.</p>