Macbook 2,1 works after OS X reinstall, then stops again

[undieman]

I have a white macbook 2,1 core duo 2GHz, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD recently replaced, and it's been on the fritz lately.

We started getting the fun wheel all the time, and then it slowly froze and stopped working over the course of a few weeks.

I did a full reinstall of OS X and things were rosy, for about a day. By the morning the fun wheel was back in action, and it froze up again. I turned it off and now just get a blue screen when I turn it on. I know I could reinstall OS X again and get a day of use, and maybe fix the problem or at least diagnose it...

I'm confused because everything worked totally fine after the reinstall, and now it's gone mental.

Immediately after the reinstall I ran repair permissions through disk utility and it took about an hour and found a lot to repair, which I thought was strange.

I'm wondering if this is a lost cause, or if it's worth having a dabble with the RAM or something else?

 

[Badbaw]

Genius Bar!

Otherwise, it's time to upgrade.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

More RAM would be nice, especially if you use Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6, but it seems the HDD is dying. Do you have the funds to get a new HDD?

 

[Badbaw]

More RAM would be nice, especially if you use Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6, but it seems the HDD is dying. Do you have the funds to get a new HDD?

I'd say it's something worse than a simple HDD dying. RAM would be nice, but it isn't the solution.

 

[undieman]

Thanks.

Yeh it is using 10.6

I replaced the harddrive a few months ago and I guess it could be that going but it seems strange. I basically just dabble and am not too sure what I'm doing. Is there a way to definitively find out if extra RAM will help? At the moment the problem seems beyond RAM which as far as I understand would just make the system slower, not lead to it dying.

 

[KnightsChivalry]

Thanks.

Yeh it is using 10.6

I replaced the harddrive a few months ago and I guess it could be that going but it seems strange. I basically just dabble and am not too sure what I'm doing. Is there a way to definitively find out if extra RAM will help? At the moment the problem seems beyond RAM which as far as I understand would just make the system slower, not lead to it dying.

Well, why don't you buy the RAM, and if it doesn't work, worse case is you buy a new macbook and put the extra RAM in there. Just food for thought

 

[Badbaw]

Again, RAM isn't your problem.

If say, you go to Activity Monitor and your system is using 1.84 GB out of the 2 GB you have (hypothetically), all that could happen is overall slowdown of memory-intensive apps (Safari, iTunes, Aperture, etc.) and sometimes crashing. Your Mac wouldn't be booting up into an infinite blue screen.

Personally, I think it's GPU/CPU related. Take it to the Genius Bar.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Well, why don't you buy the RAM, and if it doesn't work, worse case is you buy a new macbook and put the extra RAM in there. Just food for thought

But the RAM is not the problem. And RAM for a MacBook 2,1 is DDR2 200-pin RAM and would not fit DDR3 204-pin slots used in MacBooks since 2009 (and MBPs since 2008).

 

[undieman]

I've replaced the harddrive with another one out of a macmini that was working fine.

So far so good, I repaired the disk permissions and it worked fine.

I'll give it a day and find out if it worked or if it's back to its old tricks.