Hello all, I am once again in need of some help. I have five macbooks that are all experiencing the same issue. the hard drives have been wiped (as they came from a school auction) and when I turn them on, all I get is the folder icon with a question mark. I have tried to reset the pram, but that does not help. I have tried to install a new os with the dvd disk and it acts like it wants to play it but it ejects it after about 30 seconds to a minute. I even replaced one of the drives with one off of ebay, but that did not help, it is still doing the same thing. any help is greatly appreciated. I have scoured the internet to find a solution to this, but have had no such luck. Thanks in advance.
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MacBook A1181 Issues, folder icon, ejecting dvd
- Thread starter da2005pizimp
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That is all that will happen when the hard drive is wiped.
If all the drives are rejecting the disc, there could be a problem with the disc. When you hold down the option key and boot, does it show there is a disc in there, or is that when it will try to read it then spit it out?
You can also try resetting the SMC, but I doubt that will solve it. What other resources do you have available? Do you have other Macs, and what OS do they run?
I used a snow leopard that worked on the other ones, but just won't play on these. When I hold down option all I get is a mouse but nothing to click
Well the drive is wiped so there is no OS on it. And it sounds to me like the optical drive has probably gone bad. You could replace the optical drive, or if you can find one or know someone that has one, use an external USB drive with the OS X DVD to install the OS.
The other alternative is to get access to another mac and make a bootable flash drive with the OS X installer on it. This is how I typically do it.
Basically you make an image of the OS X disk and clone it to the flash drive.
Here's a litte guide for the USB installer if you wish: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/ap...how-to-create-a-bootable-usb-to-install-os-x/
EDIT: It does seem odd that it wouldn't work on any of them, which would point to a defective disk, but with it working on other computers makes it seem even stranger. All MacBooks have DVD ROM capability, so they should certainly see it, and Snow Leopard will run on all of them too. Unless by some crazy chance, all the optical drives are bad in them.
The other alternative is to get access to another mac and make a bootable flash drive with the OS X installer on it. This is how I typically do it.
Basically you make an image of the OS X disk and clone it to the flash drive.
Here's a litte guide for the USB installer if you wish: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/ap...how-to-create-a-bootable-usb-to-install-os-x/
EDIT: It does seem odd that it wouldn't work on any of them, which would point to a defective disk, but with it working on other computers makes it seem even stranger. All MacBooks have DVD ROM capability, so they should certainly see it, and Snow Leopard will run on all of them too. Unless by some crazy chance, all the optical drives are bad in them.
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Yea it is a very weird situation. I thought maybe the optical drives were bad, but I replaced one with one I picked up on ebay. ThT did not solve the problem. The disk is not the issue because it worked on a different one. I'm still looking online but cannot find anything at all. Thanks for all the help though I appreciate your time
I would proceed to see if these macs will boot to anything. As, mentioned you could try a USB installer. If you have another mac with a compatible OS and a firewire cable, you can use target disk mode to try and boot to your other mac's hard drive. If you don't have another Mac. You can download Parted Magic and burn it to a disk or put it on a USB stick and see if the macs will boot to it.
that sounds like it could be promising, how do I go about using the usb stick? I'm totally ignorant when it comes to that. Thanks.
There are various guides on the web. Simply typing "Snow Leopard USB" alone will get some good guides.
A couple I found are: http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html
And the one I posted previously: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/ap...how-to-create-a-bootable-usb-to-install-os-x/
You will need an 8GB flash drive, the Snow Leopard disk, and a working Mac. It's all done through Disk Utility that's built into OS X.