My 2008 iMac is having trouble booting—it never gets past the initial grey screen with the Apple logo and spinner. After letting it try to boot (spinner working) for upwards of 10 minutes, I'll get the kernel panic "You need to restart" message, then a minute later it will go black, then restart.
In addition to this, the screen has "noise" pixels all over (not dead, but graphical noise).
I've tried doing a Safe Boot (holding Shift while booting), but it never made it all the way through the boot.
I've also tried booting into single user mode, but the pixel noise all over the screen limits my ability to read the output.
Out of desperation (since nothing else was working), I did a RAM swap, but that didn't help either.
Is there another way to approach this problem?
Best Answer
The graphical "noise" makes me think that either the graphics drivers have been corrupted (and by the sounds of it, likely more OS components), or there's a hardware defect.
Sorry I can't be definitive, but it's hard to say for sure without having the machine in front of me. Try some of these and let us know how it goes, and we can help narrow some things down for you.