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Model A1225 / Early 2009 / 2.66, 2.93, or 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo processor

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Will not boot, stuck on apple logo screen and spinning gear

I have an early 2009 iMac with Snow Leopard installed. The other day, while I was using it the screen froze. (It happened while in screen saver mode, however, I could see the mouse move). I did a hard reset by holding the power button down. Upon rebooting though, it would hang at the white Apple logo screen with the spinning gear. Eventually the gear would stop spinning and just get stuck there. I tried all the various key options. First I tried safe mode and it would get stuck at the same point. I did a PRAM reset and an SMC reset but that did not help. I booted off of the original install DVD as well as the Snow Leopard install DVD. Both would get stuck at the same point. I ran the AHT from each DVD and no errors were reported. I ran fsck from single user mode and some minor errors were corrected, but booting would still get stuck at the white screen / spinning gear.

Any clue as to why my system will not boot? By the way, i can easily boot off of an Ubuntu live CD and all the hardware seems to function fine.

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Do you have a second Mac system? If you do review this Apple TN: How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode.

The idea here is to treat your iMac as a HD device to your other Mac so you can run Disk Utility But before you do, you may want to take the time to make a backup of anything important. I might add you also will want to run a disk fragmented app like: Drive Genius. I've found it to be one of the better defragmenters out there and it offers some additional tools that I find very useful.

Let us know how it goes.

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I will see about using another iMac to do as you suggest, however, I should add that during my troubleshooting, I completely removed the hard drive and was still unable to boot from the install DVDs, it would hang at the white apple logo screen and spinning gear.

I would think that without the hard drive, any possible drive problems would be completely factored out.

Thoughts?

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You could try giving the NVRAM/PRAM a reset to see what happens. Follow this Apple TN: About NVRAM and PRAM.

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I have tried resetting the nvram/pram and no luck. I'm wondering if it is a video card problem?

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