Mystery start up hang issue in 10.6.8 -- only to Beach ball or Safe Mode

[KurtNYC]

I have a 2007 iMac (which I love, 24", the classic acrylic, aka "white" case, great screen) and it will only start up successfully in safe mode. It is running 10.6.8. I went down the list:

- zap PRAM (did that)
- run check drives (fine)
- start in safe then in normal again (safe mode fine, then SBBOD again)
- check hardware components
- create new account and start up in that (still hangs)
- go back to original keyboard and OEM mouse
- reload from the OEM disks (failed)

Pretty much everything I had read plus everything I could think of but it is still going to a spinning beach ball when I start normal. Goes through all the screens - logo, blue, then it hits the grey screen and the cursor sits in the upper left, eventually the frozen cursor becomes a spinning beach ball that you can mouse move and that's it. Like it gets through almost all the loads and then it beachballs.

In safe mode all the hardware seems to work fine. I don't have an OEM mouse for it (but the SBBOD is movable with the one I have).

Argggh. It is killing me. It went into this state in January and I bought another machine in February after spending many hours trying to get the old one out what seems to be one mystery issue which is eluding me. Now I just kind of want to know what it is/was. Plus when that machine is working well it is beautiful -- case and screen like-new.

I'm haven't opened the case yet. Possibly a fan is off/stuck or the drive is starting fail (?) A good cleaning can't hurt.

I tried to reload the original OS and that seemed to fail -- first couple dialog boxes, loaded for a while then went to a freeze.

Any thoughts, experiences or things worth trying are greatly appreciated!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. I hate to say it, but do you back up your data?

It sounds like there are some errors in your hard drive.

If you can get into utilities, try a disk repair.
If you have MacScan or MacScan2, try those.

But I suspect that your 7 year old has an itch that cannot be scratched.

[KurtNYC]

2. I am fully backed up

to both an external HD and another machine.

Pretty sure I ran disc repair but now MacScan(s). I took it to Genius bar last week and they said it was too old for them to work on but suggested that it is 'probably the hard drive.' If I can't get it going I will swap the drive out for a new one (2TB for $60) and reload everything.

Thanks.

[Zorro]

3. Software conflict?

Load/run anything out of the ordinary before it started misbehaving?

[cquintero]

4. Did you solve it?

Hi Kurt!: I have the exact same problem as you... Did you find any solution?

Thanks!

CQ

[sir pball]

5. Try booting in "verbose mode"

Hold Command-V at boot. It forces the system to actually display every single step it's taking in the boot process, by paying attention or even pointing a camera at the screen you can find out at least exactly where it's hanging, oftentimes you can get your fix sorted out as well.

In a real last-ditch scenario, I've heard the official Apple internal-only diagnostic CDs can be found on bittorent, but I've honestly never needed them so I've never looked