intel imac wont boot~kernal panics, grey screen, etc

H

heartstar7703

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FYI: This is my first mac, so I am pretty new to all this.....

My imac was slowing down the last few months it was up and running, intermittant kernal panics (but at the time I had no clue what that meant, so I just kept rebooting to make it go away) then one day a grey screen when trying to boot, then a white screen with apple logo. And after that I was not able to boot anymore. So I drove an hour away to my closest apple store where they tried to run something and it was going super duper slow, so he said it was my hard drive and it would be $300. I wanted a 2nd opinion, so I took it to a local computer repair place and they said it would be $800 to fix the motherboard. Needless to say, I wasn't up for spending that kind of $, but I was leery about these 2 places telling me 2 different things after both of them tested it. So, I let it sit until I had time to do some research myself. So I just yesterday found my osx disks and I was told by a friend to run disk utility, came back ok. Then I was told to check the apple hardware test, I ran that with no problems reported. If it was my motherboard or hard drive, wouldn't it show in these tests? I am stumped, what can I check next to get down to the real problem? Thank you in advance for any assistance you can offer!!
 
heartstar7703 said:
FYI: This is my first mac, so I am pretty new to all this.....

My imac was slowing down the last few months it was up and running, intermittant kernal panics (but at the time I had no clue what that meant, so I just kept rebooting to make it go away) then one day a grey screen when trying to boot, then a white screen with apple logo. And after that I was not able to boot anymore. So I drove an hour away to my closest apple store where they tried to run something and it was going super duper slow, so he said it was my hard drive and it would be $300. I wanted a 2nd opinion, so I took it to a local computer repair place and they said it would be $800 to fix the motherboard. Needless to say, I wasn't up for spending that kind of $, but I was leery about these 2 places telling me 2 different things after both of them tested it. So, I let it sit until I had time to do some research myself. So I just yesterday found my osx disks and I was told by a friend to run disk utility, came back ok. Then I was told to check the apple hardware test, I ran that with no problems reported. If it was my motherboard or hard drive, wouldn't it show in these tests? I am stumped, what can I check next to get down to the real problem? Thank you in advance for any assistance you can offer!!
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Looks more like a hard drive from the symptoms you are describing. Furthermore, was the 2nd opinion place an Apple Authorized repair shop? If not, you should be more inclined to accept the Apple store diagnostic. Although I've seen the Apple store misdiagnose things, I've seen independent computer shops that are not Apple authorized misdiagnose or even make things worse because they don't know what they are doing in regards to working on Macs.

As far as the the diagnostics not detecting any problems, if it was that easy that a disk or piece of software would always tell users whats wrong then techs would be somewhat less needed..
 
djackmac said:
Looks more like a hard drive from the symptoms you are describing. Furthermore, was the 2nd opinion place an Apple Authorized repair shop? If not, you should be more inclined to accept the Apple store diagnostic. Although I've seen the Apple store misdiagnose things, I've seen independent computer shops that are not Apple authorized misdiagnose or even make things worse because they don't know what they are doing in regards to working on Macs.

As far as the the diagnostics not detecting any problems, if it was that easy that a disk or piece of software would always tell users whats wrong then techs would be somewhat less needed..
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if they were apple authorized or not, I asked if the worked on macs, they said yes. Do you know of any other tests I can run or ways to diagnose if the hd is really the problem?
 
heartstar7703 said:
I'm not sure if they were apple authorized or not, I asked if the worked on macs, they said yes. Do you know of any other tests I can run or ways to diagnose if the hd is really the problem?
Click to expand...

Most important thing is back up your data now and worry about diagnosing the drive later. Sometimes the stress of diagnosing the drive or backing it up can bring about a catastrophic failure.
 
djackmac said:
Easiest way is target disk mode to another Mac.
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I have this non bootable mac and 3 broken pc's right now, I'm desperate to fix one of them. Is there any other way to backup ? I would like to save the info if possible, but if I can't, but I can make the computer work again, so be it.
 
Boot to your OSX installer. Go to disk utility. Either restore the internal volume to an external HD (This method will erase all other data on the target volume->i.e. the external drive). Or create a new disk image of your internal HD to the external drive. Make sure the external drive is GUID partition table and Mac OS extended (journaled) format.
 
djackmac said:
Easiest way is target disk mode to another Mac.
Click to expand...

djackmac said:
Boot to your OSX installer. Go to disk utility. Either restore the internal volume to an external HD (This method will erase all other data on the target volume->i.e. the external drive). Or create a new disk image of your internal HD to the external drive. Make sure the external drive is GUID partition table and Mac OS extended (journaled) format.
Click to expand...

Thank you for those instructions, although I don't understand what a guid partition table and mac extended journaled format means at all. Ill see what I can figure out. What should I try to do after that to troubleshoot further?
 
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