[striker100]

My sister is having a problem with OS X (10.2.6) on her 15" iMac.
When she pushes the power button the iMac starts and the grey screen with the apple and spinning wheel appears.

The problem is the spinning wheel can go on indefinitely, she sometimes has to power off and on 2 or 3 times before the OS X loading (blue) screen will appear.

Short of doing a clean install of OS X, is there anything I can do for her to fix this problem?

[Some Guy []]

I'm guessing there's a problem with the hard drive, especially with all the reboots (it's probably trying to fix the problems on reboot automatically..)

I'd recommend running Disk Utility and trying to fix and it and also seeing what the errors are, it might be unfixable and would require a reformat/reinstall...

You'll need to boot off another hard drive or boot from the 10.2 CD, simply put the CD in, hold reboot the machine and hold the C key as soon as you heard the chime on boot up.

Once you're on the CD you'll want to run Disk Utility, I think it's in the 'File' menu of the installer app. Verify the Disk, then repair it if there's any problems found.


-justin