Clicking sound of death

[infz]

Here's the story.. as my cousin was rushing off to work, she noticed that her CD macbook had Updates available, so she decided to let it download them while she was away. When she came home from work several hours later, the macbook was very hot, fans spinning loudly and the screen was blank. So she forcefully shutdown. Ever since, it won't boot -- it will just display a folder with a question mark on it, and there's a repeating "clicking" sound.

To make things crazier, the macbook is about a week away from the one-year warranty expiring!!

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated! There's no Apple Store in her town but there are AASPs (Apple Authorized Service Provider.... ie. just resellers right?) Would taking it into an AASP be worthwhile, ie. could they fix something like this? Would they ship it to Apple for her?

 

[amoda]

If it's a authorized service provider than it should have staff on hand that can repair it, ifnot they'll send it to Apple for you. If they were a reseller they would have the name "Apple Authorized Reseller".

Or you could just call Apple directly and bypass them completely. If you're in Canada or the US the phone number is: 1-877-576-2775

 

[0098386]

I'm not really a tech guy, but it sounds like the HDD is gone. The flashing folder is likely OSX's little boot thing not being able to find anything to boot from. I believe the priority is- Boot disc (CD/DVD), hard drive, network. If one isn't available it moves along the list, unless you've gone and told the computer to boot up into network mode?

If you had more time I'd say you should put the MB into Target Disk Mode and view it on another Mac.

 

[infz]

Thanks for the advice! I think you're right that it's the harddisk that must be clicking, but I don't get how the update process etc. could have caused such a thing. *shrug* I hope Apple will take care of this :S

Quick question, does it matter if she takes it to an AASP even though she bought it from the online Apple Store? So, she wouldn't be taking it to the place she bought it from or something like that... Thanks again.

 

[amoda]

Nope, no problem at all.