Ok, so my Dad kindly sent me Disc Warrior (for Leopard and Snow Leopard) and I put it in and did a restart whilst holding "c". The DVD drive spun indicating it was booting from the DW disc. I left it all night last night and this morning still grey screen but with Apple icon and the spinning spinner thing.
I will eject this disc and try with the OS disc to see if that gets anywhere. I think it's cactus. Regards Pete On 13/01/2013, at 4:26 PM, Ronni Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Peter & Susan, > > I'm having a break from WAMUG.... but in this instance... I felt I should > contribute. > > On startup a Circle/Slash (Prohibitory Sign) means your Mac can’t find a > valid Startup Disk. > > This can indicate a corrupt installation of Mac OS X or a failed (or failing) > hard drive. > > A pass through the excellent DiskWarrior utility is highly recommended for > any disk-related startup problems. > You can also try Apple Disk Utility (booted from the installation disc as > Susan has already mentioned), or another third-party utility like TechTool > Pro or Drive Genius to try to repair the disk. > > If the drive is OK after repairs but the Mac still won’t boot, do an Archive > & Install of Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) to replace the operating system. > > If Mountain Lion: Reinstall Mountain Lion > > Restart your Mac holding the cmd+r keys. > > When Mountain Lion installs it creates a special small, hidden Recovery > Volume on your hard drive. > Booting cmd-r will boot your Mac into that Recovery Volume. > <http://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/> > > The screen should give you these choices... > > Restore from TM backup > Reinstall Mac OS X > Get help online > Disk Utility > > Choose Reinstall OS X. This will be an install in place and won't affect any > of your own data. > > Cheers, > Ronni back to her break from WAMUG > > On 13/01/2013, at 4:04 PM, Susan Hastings <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi Peter, I did a quick google and found this question and answer which >> solved someone's problem. If your son has the original install disk he >> should boot up in from the install disk, by holding down "c" when starting >> up. He can then run disk utility on his hard drive to check for problems as >> a first step. Also, we need to know which operating system he is running. >> >> http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-operating-system/271143-macbook-pro-wont-boot-up-no-recovery-disk.html >> Regards, Susan >> Sent from my iPad >> >> On 13/01/2013, at 12:59 PM, Peter Crisp <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> My 12 yo's MacBook has refused to boot up after shutting down in the normal >>> way a few nights ago. >>> >>> I am remote so trying to resolve this remotely from him is a bit >>> challenging. >>> >>> I did a quick google and it suggested to try boot up in Safe mode. >>> >>> He tried this but screen stays on the grey screen with a circle with a >>> diagonal slash through it the whole time. I left overnight thinking it >>> might be processing but to no avail. >>> >>> Are there a series of steps to go through to maybe work this out? >>> >>> We have full backup on Time Capsule to restore content if it turns ugly. >>> >>> Any tips appreciated. >>> >>> Regards >>> >>> Pete > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.wamug.org.au/pipermail/wamug.org.au-wamug/attachments/20130113/fb9c2d53/attachment.htm > > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - > <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
