Repair Gray Screen on MacBook, iMac, or Mac Pro
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Written By Vishal
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Approved By Rohit Arora
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Updated on 31 May, 2024 -
Min Reading 5 Min - Share
Summary: Grey screen of death giving nightmares? This post shares some easy ways to repair gray screens on iMac, MacBook, or Mac Pro. Download the free-to-try Mac data recovery tool to create a recovery drive and recover data.
. Disconnect All External Peripheral Devices
2. Use Disk Utility to Repair the Storage Drive
3. Start Up Mac by Using Safe Boot Mode
4. Reset NVRAM and PRAM to Fix the Issue
5. Use Recovery Drive to Salvage Mac Data
6. Reinstall macOS
It can be quite frustrating when your iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Air, or their Pro model stalls on a plain gray screen. Sometimes, your Mac doesn’t even show an error message stating the real cause behind the gray screen. But you may find the Apple logo, a spinning globe, a folder with a question mark, or a prohibitory sign along with the gray screen. In any case, your Mac gets stuck, and you can’t skip the screen to move forward to the login screen.
So, what do you do? First off, you should try to find out all the possible causes behind a gray screen on Mac. Let’s start from there.
Reasons behind the Mac Gray Screen of Death Error
- A defective or unauthorized peripheral device causes your Mac to stall at the gray screen while waiting for the device to respond to the command.
- Peripheral devices that don’t have an updated firmware can lead to Mac gray screen with circle slash.
- A faulty startup drive might cause the Mac gray screen with no logo. Read More: Repair your macOS startup drive
- If you’ve installed any new program on your Mac and it’s not functioning correctly, it’ll cause Mac gray screen error.
If you’re facing the Mac gray screen after login or at startup, there are multiple ways to try and fix the issue. Take a look at some in the next sections.
1. Disconnect All External Peripheral Devices
A defective peripheral or cable causes the signaling pins on Mac’s ports to get stuck in a single condition (low, high, or neutral). This signaling issue freezes your Mac during the boot process. You need to remove all the peripherals one by one by using the method mentioned next.
- Shut down the Mac by pressing the Power button for 3 to 5 seconds.
- Remove audio cables, headphones, Ethernet cables, and other peripherals from Mac.
- Press the power button to switch on the Mac.
- When the Mac login screen opens, reconnect a peripheral, then restart the Mac.
- Do this for all peripherals, one at a time, to find the bad peripheral.
- Connect all the peripherals except the defective and restart your Mac.
2. Use Disk Utility to Repair the Storage Drive
Check whether your hard drive or SSD is causing the gray screen of death issue on your Mac. To confirm, launch Disk Utility in macOS Recovery mode. Run First Aid to verify and fix any startup drive issues. Steps are as follows:
- Shut down your Mac by pressing the Power button for 3 to 5 seconds.
- Start your Mac, then immediately press and hold the Command + R keys.
- Release the keys when something appears. Mac boots into the macOS recovery mode.
- From the “macOS Utilities” window, choose “Disk Utility,” then click Continue.
- Choose Macintosh HD (the startup disk) from the left column of Disk Utility.
- Click the First Aid tab, then click Run to verify and fix any storage drive issues.
- Once the drive repair is successful, restart your Mac normally.
- When the drive can’t be fixed, back it up, and replace it with a new one.
3. Start Up Mac By Using Safe Boot Mode
By starting your Mac using Safe Boot mode, you allow macOS to run standard diagnostics and can eliminate the gray screen of death problem. Safe Boot mode runs only the essential system applications to start up your Mac. Steps to start your Mac in Safe Boot mode are as follows:
- Shut down your Mac by pressing the Power button for 3 to 5 seconds.
- Start the Mac, then press-hold the Shift key. Release it when the login screen appears.
- Once the desktop appears, restart your Mac from the Apple menu.
4. Reset NVRAM and PRAM to Fix the Issue
To fix gray screen problem on your Mac, try resetting your NVRAM and PRAM to their default settings. Steps are as follows:
- Shut down your Mac by pressing the Power button for 3 to 5 seconds.
- Start your Mac then press and hold the Option + Command + P + R keys immediately.
- Release the keys when your Mac starts up for the second time.
- When your Mac finishes starting up, it resets NVRAM and PRAM to their default settings.
5. Use Recovery Drive to Salvage Mac Data
Note: Create Recovery Drive feature is only available in Stellar Data Recovery Version 10 & earlier! The latest version has eliminated the need of any other Mac or external device. User can directly use Stellar Data Recovery through an activated link.
When the above fixes don’t work, try a bootable Mac data recovery software to scan and recover data from the troubled Mac storage drive. Follow the steps mentioned next.
Step 1. Download and install the *trial version of Stellar Data Recovery Professional on a working Mac. Launch the software and create a recovery drive.
Read More: How to Create Recovery Drive
Step 2. Connect the USB recovery drive on your non-working Mac. Start your Mac and press-hold the Option key. Now, select the recovery drive. Next, choose Stellar Data Recovery, and click Continue.
Step 3. Use the tool to select the type of data and drive location. Toggle on Deep Scan, then click Scan. Select all the required files, then click Recover. Save it to an external hard drive.
*Trial version of Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac allows free scanning and free file preview. But to perform the recovery, you will have to activate the full software. The software comes with 30 days money-back policy, just in case.
6. Reinstall macOS
Once you’ve recovered your Mac storage drive with Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac, follow the steps mentioned next to reinstall macOS and fix the gray screen problem completely.
- Force shut down your Mac by pressing the Power button for 3 to 5 seconds.
- Start the machine by holding the Command + R keys to boot into macOS recovery mode.
- From the macOS Utilities window, click “Reinstall macOS,” then click Continue.
- Perform the on-screen instructions to reinstall the default macOS to the storage drive.
- Restore the recovered data to the storage drive once your Mac starts up.
Conclusion
Getting the Mac gray screen of death is troublesome, but there are methods to fix it on Mac. Try out the troubleshooting techniques presented in the post to resolve the Mac gray screen issue in no time.
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NO About The Author
Vishal is a data recovery expert @Stellar. He addresses data loss scenarios on a Mac. He intends to help people solve their macOS problems. Besides, Vishal prefers to read about astronomy and autobiography, and his favorite is Steve Jobs - The man who thought different written by Karen Bluementhal.
21 comments
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Hi Vishal,
My mum’s 2011 iMac won’t boot up, the apple logo appears and loads up until the end and then it just gets stuck with the grey screen. I’ve trying resenting the PRAM and trying it to boot in recovery mode but it just stays on the grey screen.
Would this be a graphics card or hard drive issue?
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Duda
Hi Duda,
Based on the symptoms you have described, it is possible that the issue could be related to the graphics card or hard drive. A common cause of the grey screen issue on a Mac is a failing or corrupted hard drive. When the Mac is unable to locate the startup disk or system files, it can get stuck on the grey screen. To check if this is the case, you can try booting the iMac into Safe Mode by holding down the Shift key during startup. If the iMac boots up successfully in Safe Mode, it is likely that the issue is related to the hard drive.
Another possibility is that the graphics card or GPU may be failing. If the iMac has a dedicated graphics card, you can try booting it up while holding down the D key to run Apple Hardware Test or Apple Diagnostics. This will run a series of tests to check for any hardware issues, including graphics card problems.
Hope it helps!