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• My iMac: Mid 2010 27" i7 with external SSD Yosemite startup drive, 12GB memory. I turn it off at night and restart in the morning.
The last few days I've been getting a blank white startup screen on both monitors. I get the Apple logo but when the progress bar gets to about 33%, everything goes white and freezes. A restart, or sometimes two restarts, usually works and things seem normal. At least most of the time - yesterday after startup, the fan started running loud until I restarted - on two different occasions.
A few days earlier, all my applications were crashing when I launched them. Calendar (one of my startup apps) opened with an Apple failure report. I've also had a few times when my desktop background image was jet black (icons and curser worked normally). Restarting usually fixed these problem. I've run disk utility and everything seems to OK.
Yesterday I booted off the internal stock drive and used it most of the day without problems, except the SSD was missing until I shut down, disconnected and reconnected the firewire cable. When I restarted off the SSD, everything worked great with no problems. The white screen was back this morning.
These problems seem to start about a week ago when I removed my 7 year old Buffalo router (my internet connection was 3x faster without it). I've got a new Asus dual band router that seems to be working fine.
This has been a very stable machine. Any suggestions on what the problem is and how I could fix it?
TIA
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First, try both zapping PRAM and doing a SMC reset.
Zap PRAM: Using a wired USB keyboard, hold down Command+Option+P+R on startup and continue to hold down those keys until you've heard at least 3 boot-chimes.
SMC Reset: Shut down and unplug the iMac. Leave it unplugged for at least 15 seconds. Then plug it back in and boot.
When you've booted after this, go into System Preferences > Displays and hold down the option key to see the "Detect Displays" button. Click the Detect Displays button.
...
If this doesn't fix it then download SMART Utility and when you run it, use the "Install SAT SMART driver" option under the "Smart Utility" menu and install the SAT drivers. Reboot. Then run the SMART Utility again.
The SAT drivers may permit your computer to display SMART status of external drives like your SSD. Do all drives pass SMART tests?
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My money's on a problem with your Firewire enclosure, its power supply (if there is one), or maybe cables/connections. Also make sure all power cords are plugged securely.
What is your enclosure, exactly? Is it the only thing plugged into the FW port or is there a chain?
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Chakravartin wrote:
First, try both zapping PRAM and doing a SMC reset.
Zap PRAM: Using a wired USB keyboard, hold down Command+Option+P+R on startup and continue to hold down those keys until you've heard at least 3 boot-chimes.
SMC Reset: Shut down and unplug the iMac. Leave it unplugged for at least 15 seconds. Then plug it back in and boot.
When you've booted after this, go into System Preferences > Displays and hold down the option key to see the "Detect Displays" button. Click the Detect Displays button.
...
If this doesn't fix it then download SMART Utility and when you run it, use the "Install SAT SMART driver" option under the "Smart Utility" menu and install the SAT drivers. Reboot. Then run the SMART Utility again.
The SAT drivers may permit your computer to display SMART status of external drives like your SSD. Do all drives pass SMART tests?
I zapped the pram and all of my drives appeared on the desktop but in the Startup disk options, only one of the partitions of my internal hard drive (Snow Leopard) and "network startup" were available. I chose "network startup" and rebooted. Several minutes later, my iMac had started up off a small USB backup of my SSD (very slow and clunky). I then chose my SSD in the startup options and rebooted. It seemed normal, but Calendar crashed immediately.
I then did the SMC reset (I unplugged everything). After reading Black's post, I also disconnected a second Firewire drive from a firewire chain which I used for my Time Machine backup. My iMac started up off the SSD without any problems. I will try reattaching the 2nd firewire drive and see if problems persist.
Black wrote:
My money's on a problem with your Firewire enclosure, its power supply (if there is one), or maybe cables/connections. Also make sure all power cords are plugged securely.
What is your enclosure, exactly? Is it the only thing plugged into the FW port or is there a chain?
My SSD is in a Macally 2.5" Firewire800/USB3.0 enclosure. It's first in a chain before a 3.5" Macally FW enclosure.
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steve... wrote: The last few days I've been getting a blank white startup screen on both monitors. I get the Apple logo but when the progress bar gets to about 33%, everything goes white and freezes.
Exact same thing happened to my 2012 mini running 10.10.1 on an external SSD via USB3. There isn't supposed to be a progress bar on a standard boot.
I just blamed the super cheap, totally exposed USB3 board and/or cable. It just dangles off the back of the setup. It runs 24/7 so I was kind of expecting an issue at some point (it's my TV's computer). I just restarted and all was well. I think I did a SHIFT-boot first just in case. It's been fine since, but I expect it to happen again one day.
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hal wrote:
[quote=steve...]The last few days I've been getting a blank white startup screen on both monitors. I get the Apple logo but when the progress bar gets to about 33%, everything goes white and freezes.
Exact same thing happened to my 2012 mini running 10.10.1 on an external SSD via USB3. There isn't supposed to be a progress bar on a standard boot.
Yosemite displays a progress bar while it starts up.
There's no way to distinguish a safe-boot from a normal boot anymore until you get to the login screen and see the "safe boot" message in the corner of the screen.
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steve... wrote:
[quote=Chakravartin]
First, try both zapping PRAM and doing a SMC reset.
Zap PRAM: Using a wired USB keyboard, hold down Command+Option+P+R on startup and continue to hold down those keys until you've heard at least 3 boot-chimes.
SMC Reset: Shut down and unplug the iMac. Leave it unplugged for at least 15 seconds. Then plug it back in and boot.
When you've booted after this, go into System Preferences > Displays and hold down the option key to see the "Detect Displays" button. Click the Detect Displays button.
...
If this doesn't fix it then download SMART Utility and when you run it, use the "Install SAT SMART driver" option under the "Smart Utility" menu and install the SAT drivers. Reboot. Then run the SMART Utility again.
The SAT drivers may permit your computer to display SMART status of external drives like your SSD. Do all drives pass SMART tests?
I zapped the pram and all of my drives appeared on the desktop but in the Startup disk options, only one of the partitions of my internal hard drive (Snow Leopard) and "network startup" were available. I chose "network startup" and rebooted. Several minutes later, my iMac had started up off a small USB backup of my SSD (very slow and clunky). I then chose my SSD in the startup options and rebooted. It seemed normal, but Calendar crashed immediately.
I then did the SMC reset (I unplugged everything). After reading Black's post, I also disconnected a second Firewire drive from a firewire chain which I used for my Time Machine backup. My iMac started up off the SSD without any problems. I will try reattaching the 2nd firewire drive and see if problems persist.
Black wrote:
My money's on a problem with your Firewire enclosure, its power supply (if there is one), or maybe cables/connections. Also make sure all power cords are plugged securely.
What is your enclosure, exactly? Is it the only thing plugged into the FW port or is there a chain?
My SSD is in a Macally 2.5" Firewire800/USB3.0 enclosure. It's first in a chain before a 3.5" Macally FW enclosure.
Thanks for the details... I have two of the prior models (FW800/USB2) for SSD booting. I wonder if you accidentally unplugged the 3.5" enclosure when fumbling with cords for the router swap?
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Update:
I re-attached the 2nd Firewire drive in the chain and rebooted. Some application opened OK but Calendar, Safari and iTunes all crashed when I opened them (tried several times).
I then disconnected the drive and all seems to be well again. I don't have another cable to try but will order one and see if that helps.
In the meantime, everything seems to be working great.
Thanks Chakravartin and Black for your help. I would still be suffering without it.
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The 3.5" drive is plugged into wall power, right? Did you check that connection?
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Black wrote:
The 3.5" drive is plugged into wall power, right? Did you check that connection?
I've been making regular Time Machine backups with that drive so it did have power.
I also remembered that the second drive in the chain is FW 400, while the SSD is FW 800. From what I understand, that should be OK.
northern california coast
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