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dandeco

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 5, 2008
1,146
951
Brockton, MA
Someone I know is planning to sell me his old MacBook (black version with 2 GHz Core Duo processor and 2 GB of RAM). He says that he had to pull out the 80 GB hard drive because it gave him a "gray screen of death," and that the disc drive isn't functioning properly (a new hard drive also didn't work, as the gray screen of death was still there and the disc drive wouldn't boot). I still have two 2 GB RAM sticks and two 250 GB SATA hard drives left over from my broken HP Pavilion dv-7 computer (salvaged quite a few parts from it that could work in a MacBook). Could it be likely that this machine has a problem with the logic board, or should both the hard drive and disc drive be replaced? (I could try booting it from a FireWire drive to see how it works.)

Thought I'd get some advice before I spend my money. I have been pondering getting an Intel MacBook that I could easily repair to working order.
 

miles01110

macrumors Core
Jul 24, 2006
19,260
36
The Ivory Tower (I'm not coming down)
I don't think your friend's tests were conclusive. If both the hard drive and the disc drive are broken, you can't boot from the CD to tell if it's the hard drive and unless OS X was installed on the second hard drive that wouldn't work either.
 

dandeco

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 5, 2008
1,146
951
Brockton, MA
...and unless OS X was installed on the second hard drive that wouldn't work either.

That is why I plan on creating an "emergency partition" on the FireWire hard drive with Mac OS X Leopard, to boot up certain Macs for if their hard drives fail, and I may also reformat one of my 250 GB hard drives to run Mac OS X on it
 

weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,834
3,508
Get a usb optical drive and run the hardware check from the install DVD assuming your acquaintance still has it. Can't hurt.
 
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