iMac white screen of death?

wippers

wippers

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Gareth
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Hi has anyone any experience with the IMac white screen of death ?
I have a 5 year old 27" IMac which has worked fine until last week where it no longer boots past the white screen. I get the Apple logo and timeline bar but then just a white screen.
I've tried to boot through time machine and also the utility option but the screen just turns white and that's it.
Is this a HDD failure or does anyone have any advice?
 
Sounds like when I had HDD failure on my MacBook. There is a way to get it to boot using a certain command mode so you may be able to recover some stuff.
 
If you're still in South Cheshire then Bramley Computers in Chesterfield is worth contacting about it. The official Apple repairer, SLI in Chesterton, isn't that good. They botched my imac. If it had apple care then you an risk a visit to the genius bar in Trafford Centre.

If you have wireless things eg mice/keyboard it's worth plugging in wired ones to see if that changes anything.
 
T_J_G said:
Sounds like when I had HDD failure on my MacBook. There is a way to get it to boot using a certain command mode so you may be able to recover some stuff.
Click to expand...
Likewise. Was my opportunity to upgrade to an SSD though so wasn't a total loss....y'know other than years of photos that I'd foolishly not backed up!
 
I had a similar issue with my G5 and it turned out to be an external USB drive that was plugged in at start up, I unplugged the drive and rebooted and it booted fine. basically unplug any usb stuff and try again.
 
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Thanks for the input guys. I've tried a few things listed in the link and after quite a few attempts I've managed to get the home screen up. Is there anything I can do now to back up and see if there is any repairs to be done?
 
Time machine will back up your HDD. Just connect a USB external HD and start Time Machine. You can then restore your data straight from the backup
 
That sounds like HDD failure of some kind or over heating. Make sure vents are clear just in case. I think it might need professional help.
 
I had that, replaced the HD then it was good to go again
 
Time Machine takes bloody ages, especially the first time. Quicker to just dump your files onto a disc using Finder.

I don't know if an external SSD will draw less power than a HDD, but might be worth considering getting one for faster write times. Assuming you can get it back up.
 
I have time machine on an external drive, may take a while first time, but every day backup only takes minutes
 
Bluekwack said:
I have time machine on an external drive, may take a while first time, but every day backup only takes minutes
Click to expand...
Me too. It took two days solid (48hrs) for the first backup. Subsequent backups are usually just a few minutes, often only a few seconds.

I used to have Time Machine on a network attached drive and it got corrupted once. So had to delete and start again, it took days to complete the first time. Then after loading a couple of gigs worth of photos it again took ages to back up the new images. just got fed up with the machine (late 2012 iMac 27) basically running Time Machine all the time. To be honest I'm not a fan of Time Machine.
 
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