All,

My MacBook Pro 17in from 2007 has decided to boot to the grey screen. It's running lion. Was working great until the screen went weird on me as if the vid I was watching on stuff decided to 'maximise' then freeze. Had mouse pointer and caps lock working but nothing else.

Anyway, I think I've reset the pram and smc and I can also boot into safe mode. I checked login items but nothing seemed strange there. I have a copy if disk warrior but that won't self boot for some reason ( yes holding c down ).

In safe mode I have used disk utility to check and repair permissions and the local copy of disk warrior also completed this ok. Verify came up with an ok state.

So what next? The boot cd I made when I got lion back in 2011 boots but takes me to the grey screen.

My latest back up to external is about a month old so I'm kinda happy to loose some email.

I think I should replace the drive yeah?
What should I get and how do I go about getting my time machine back up to this drive?

Remembering my USB and cd copy of lion don't seem to boot but I did try to reinstall from USB but also booted back to grey. I think thru only thing I haven't tried is safe mode then tell it to boot from the cd and restart

In Christchurch.