Any clue what's wrong with my computer? Here's a description of what happened:
I have a late 2008 Macbook running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Approximately 2 weeks ago I upgraded from 2GB to 4GB of RAM (I bought from Crucial) with the intention of installing Snow Leopard and then Lion.
Last night the trackpad started acting up (it wouldn't let me tap-to-click). I could still use the trackpad by clicking it, but the tap functions were gone. I tried rebooting, but the computer wouldn't shut down on its own. After about five minutes of watching the wheel go round and round I forced the computer off by holding the power button.
When I subsequently restarted the computer it started beeping in increments of three. A little research revealed that this indicated a problem with the RAM.
I swapped out the new RAM for the old RAM and the beeping stopped, but now the computer couldn't get past the gray apple screen with the little circular loading icon/wheel. After about 15 minutes of waiting for the computer to boot I shut it down again.
I put the new RAM back in to see if that would fix anything, but the three-beep warning return, so I switched back to the old RAM and again restarted the computer. Again, it couldn't get past the gray apple screen.
I reset the NVRAM, but this didn't resolve the issue. I tried booting in safe mode but couldn't. I tried target disk mode and nothing happened. Each time I restarted the computer it would get to the gray apple screen and stay there indefinitely.
I tried single-user mode and verbose mode and didn't see any indication of a HDD problem. I saw text resembling the following: "BSD root: disk0s2, major 14, minor 2"
I ran both the short and long version of the Apple Hardware Test but no problems were found.
Last I tried running disk utility from the OSX installation DVD, but Disk Utility wouldn't recognize/find the HDD. The larger HDD drive information would appear on the left hand side of the disk utility window (Fujitsu 160GB etc.), but the smaller "Macintosh HD" icon would not. Thus I couldn't get the HDD to appear in the First Aid tab.
When I restarted yet again, I got the flashing folder/question mark indicating that the computer couldn't find the HDD.
Now, I'm stuck. Any advice is appreciated. I'm hoping it's just an HDD failure and not the logic board. Fortunately, I have everything backed up on an external HDD. Planning on going to the Genius Bar this weekend, but was hoping for a little information in the mean time.
I have a late 2008 Macbook running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Approximately 2 weeks ago I upgraded from 2GB to 4GB of RAM (I bought from Crucial) with the intention of installing Snow Leopard and then Lion.
Last night the trackpad started acting up (it wouldn't let me tap-to-click). I could still use the trackpad by clicking it, but the tap functions were gone. I tried rebooting, but the computer wouldn't shut down on its own. After about five minutes of watching the wheel go round and round I forced the computer off by holding the power button.
When I subsequently restarted the computer it started beeping in increments of three. A little research revealed that this indicated a problem with the RAM.
I swapped out the new RAM for the old RAM and the beeping stopped, but now the computer couldn't get past the gray apple screen with the little circular loading icon/wheel. After about 15 minutes of waiting for the computer to boot I shut it down again.
I put the new RAM back in to see if that would fix anything, but the three-beep warning return, so I switched back to the old RAM and again restarted the computer. Again, it couldn't get past the gray apple screen.
I reset the NVRAM, but this didn't resolve the issue. I tried booting in safe mode but couldn't. I tried target disk mode and nothing happened. Each time I restarted the computer it would get to the gray apple screen and stay there indefinitely.
I tried single-user mode and verbose mode and didn't see any indication of a HDD problem. I saw text resembling the following: "BSD root: disk0s2, major 14, minor 2"
I ran both the short and long version of the Apple Hardware Test but no problems were found.
Last I tried running disk utility from the OSX installation DVD, but Disk Utility wouldn't recognize/find the HDD. The larger HDD drive information would appear on the left hand side of the disk utility window (Fujitsu 160GB etc.), but the smaller "Macintosh HD" icon would not. Thus I couldn't get the HDD to appear in the First Aid tab.
When I restarted yet again, I got the flashing folder/question mark indicating that the computer couldn't find the HDD.
Now, I'm stuck. Any advice is appreciated. I'm hoping it's just an HDD failure and not the logic board. Fortunately, I have everything backed up on an external HDD. Planning on going to the Genius Bar this weekend, but was hoping for a little information in the mean time.