MacBook Pro Won't Boot From Anything

[High on Life]

Hey MacRumorians,

I've never run into a Mac problem I haven' been able to fix, but this one seems to be troubling me.

I have a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard. The battery says "Replace Soon", but usually works fine as long as it's plugged in. The other day I was messing around with PathFinder, a Finder replacement, and I may have accidentally messed with some permissions by quitting and restarting Finder so many times.

Anyway, it won't boot now. The Apple logo shows up, then an empty loading bar appears, and then finally the spinning wheel. The bar stays empty, disappears, then it stalls on the logo and the spinning wheel.

Looks like this but empty:

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I have the Mac OS X Install DVD and DiskWarrior, but it won't boot from CD/DVD. It won't boot in Safe Mode or Target Disk Mode. When I boot into Single User Mode and run FSCK, it says "Macintosh HD could not be repaired".

Any idea how I can get my files back or go about formatting and reinstalling?

 

[Les Kern]

I hope I am wrong but this might not end well for your data. If you have an Apple store you can visit, might try that. They may have some tools we are unaware of. Everything you mentioned you tried was what we all do. One thing is trying Netboot if you have some way to set that up. Or if you have an external DVD drive and hold the Option key down and try to boot to that. Chances are you'll see the disk and will be able to boot to it. What I usually do is have a partioned external firewaire drive with OS X on it and DiskWarrior. Plug that in and hold the option and see if you can boot to that then run DW. If you have a frend with a working Mac install the DVD to the external drive, then mount it and drop on DW.

Good luck.

 

[High on Life]

No Avail

I have another MacBook Pro with OS X on it, so I booted from the DiskWarrior DVD on that one then hooked it up to the bricked latop over firewire. I booted up and held down Option, but the only thing that shows up is Macintosh HD. Are there any special instructions for booting to a DVD on another laptop over firewire?

 

[Les Kern]

Load DiskWarrior on good laptop. Start good laptop in target disk mode. Boot bad laptop and hold the Option key. Select good laptop HD and run DW. Of course this assumes that the good laptop is able to boot the MB Pro.
Another option is to use the external FW drive with the same OS loaded on it. That also assumes that the good laptop is able to initiate.
I tested it:
http://www.leskern.net/TDdw.mov