Macbook Pro stuck a grey loading screen

Jaystation · 1 Aug 2014 at 02:21

Hey

The misses Macbook Pro seems to have a problem. Tried turning it on, and it sticks at a grey screen, with the apple logo and a spinning wheel. It starts with an empty white bar below - but never fills and eventually disappears and just stays at the logo and spinning wheel.

I can turn it on and off with the power button but thats it. Ive tried it turning on whilst holding shift, nothing worked. Then tried it again holding option, and it start a screen with a picture of the Hard Drive, and Macintosh Drive written under which I clicked, and took me back in to the above routine.

Is there anything else I should be trying before making a Genius appointment

bloodiedathame · 1 Aug 2014 at 10:33

I think you should be aiming to get to Disk Utility either from another OSX install/installer or via your current one, that way you can run a repair and hopefully fix.

Have you got an installer or another install on a USB drive?

What OS is her MBP running? When you hold opt you should see a recovery partition on OSX from Lion, Mountain Lion and Mavericks. From the recovery partition you should be able to run disk utility and see what's wrong.

Jaystation · 1 Aug 2014 at 19:25

Thank you for the info - A lot of that is lost on me unfortunately!

An installer? The computer is just as is when it came out of the box. There were no discs with it at all, and everything was already installed! I don't have anything with regards to doing an install.

It was running Mountain Lion. When I held option however, I got no options for recovery partitions. It just displayed the only Hard Drive installed in the Mac - and allowed me to click on it, which took me back to the grey screen of death.

Am I doing something wrong?

momo56 · 1 Aug 2014 at 20:08

Hold CMD and R when turning it on and select the recovery HD ?

Jaystation · 1 Aug 2014 at 21:47

momo56 said:
Hold CMD and R when turning it on and select the recovery HD ?

Tried this - it just goes to the grey screen, with spinning wheel - no option to select recovery HD

shine · 1 Aug 2014 at 21:54

Try the tips here:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5282

HecFam · 1 Aug 2014 at 21:58

i would possibly suggest booting into verbose mode using CMD + V and running a Fsck. Or creatable an install disk and use the disk utility from there.

OhEsEcks · 1 Aug 2014 at 22:02

Mine started doing this and then eventually stopped reading drives altogether. When it originally started, I did all the usual trouble shooting. Then I started trying drives I knew that worked and it wouldn't boot those either. Thought it was a motherboard fault developing, but some Googling around and there was mentions of replacing the SATA cable. The cost was about £30 for part and shipping and it worked. Machine reads drives fine now, though I gave it to my brother as his laptop died. The alternative was taking it to the Apple store or a repairer and having them poke around, tell me I needed a part, wait for them to get it in and then charge me for all of it because it was out of warranty.

Jaystation · 7 Aug 2014 at 22:19

I think the HD must be dead. I managed to get into the only thing I could, which was by hitting CMD + S when booting. From here, I went for /sbin/fsck -fy and after it displayed '** Rebuilding catalog B-tree' for a while, finally it came up with 'The volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired'.

So I am right in thinking. this is dead?

Apple store job I guess?

shine · 7 Aug 2014 at 23:27

Replace the SATA cable like OhEsEcks suggested. It is a common problem.

It helped someone with similar problems recently:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18611352

bloodiedathame · 8 Aug 2014 at 08:17

If you can, maybe take out the drive and put it in a USB/FW enclosure and try to boot from it, that will tell you if it's the SATA cable that is the problem.

Jaystation · 8 Aug 2014 at 20:43

How easy is it to get the thing apart to get to the hard drive and sata cable?

Ive never done it before - but pretty competent!

I have a spare data cable lying around so I should be able to check

UnworthyBean · 8 Aug 2014 at 21:25

Jaystation said:
How easy is it to get the thing apart to get to the hard drive and sata cable?

Ive never done it before - but pretty competent!

I have a spare data cable lying around so I should be able to check

Really easy, handful of screws on the base and then another two to get the hard drive out. Should be self explanatory.

Jaystation · 8 Aug 2014 at 22:35

Alright perfect! Luckily the bloody feet have fallen off anyway, revealing the screws! I shall tackle it tonight!

OhEsEcks · 9 Aug 2014 at 16:16

Jaystation said:
Alright perfect! Luckily the bloody feet have fallen off anyway, revealing the screws! I shall tackle it tonight!

https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Mac

Find the guide for your machine, follow the guide to take it apart, do process in reverse to put it back together.

Jaystation · 9 Aug 2014 at 23:00

OhEsEcks said:
https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Mac

Find the guide for your machine, follow the guide to take it apart, do process in reverse to put it back together.

Wonderful, thank you!

Jaystation · 20 Aug 2014 at 23:23

After everything, ended up being a software issue. Reinstalled and we're back to normal!