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Model A1224 / Early 2009 / 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo processor

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iMac freezes halfway into boot; Command + R and reformatting failed

Hey all from fixit

I’ve recently encountered a problem with my iMac from 2009.

It’s had the classic 1 TB of HD storage and 2 GB of RAM for 10 years now.

A while back from when this was posted, the iMac had lines running up and down its screen. Assumed a GPU issue, but I didn’t do anything about it since it was technically still working.

Now, the iMac boots into the Apple logo, but is EXTREMELY SLOW. I’m talking 10 minutes to boot halfway, only for it to shut down completely. I was assuming a thermal issue, but I used the “command + S” to bring up the built in bios coding, and has remained there for multiple hours while reformatting the drive. It has failed to do so numerous times. Now Command + R will not work either, not booting into anything. I have tried external drives, those have not worked either. I have no idea what to do.

Answer this question I have this problem too

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So did you fix the screen issue?

Do you have a FireWire external hard drive which you can setup as a boot drive?

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yes i can have an external hard drive. i have tried target disk mode; has not worked for me either.

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See if it will boot in Recovery Mode by holding down the option key on start up. This sounds like a failing GPU to me.

UPDATE 6/8/19

Your machine shipped with a system installation DVD, insert it, and boot up holding down the C key.

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6 Comments:

Yes, blue lines appear up and down when booting up. Does this mean the GPU is preventing my whole system from booting?

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Unfortunately, the recovery mode partition is toast. It will not boot into that either.

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CD seems to be bust as well. %#*@ thing refuses to boot into anything at this point

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Do you get a boot progress bar at all and where does it stop?

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Stops about halfway. With the official boot disc it usually stops at around 3/4ths. Can’t get farther than that though.

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