MacBook Start Up/Boot Problem. Please Help.

[aquestionmark]

Hi,
So I've been trawling the web for hours looking to a solution to this problem but can't fix it so please help if you can.

When I turn on my 2007 MacBook the grey screen runs fine. When it comes to the blue "Starting Mac OS X" screen, the blue progress bar fills but then stays like this and won't go any further. I've left it like this for over an hour and it stays the same.

The measures I have taken so far are:
- Repair Disk & Verify Disk in Disk Utility
- Ran fsck thing in Single-User mode, no problems detected
- Repaired Disk Permissions
- Pressed cmd/alt/p/r to reset RAM on startup

I know my Harddrive is detected so I don't know what the problem could be, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Makosuke]

Have you tried booting in Safe Mode? If you've got it set to auto-login, a program that launches at login could cause that symptom, and Safe Mode will bypass it if it is. It'd also determine if it's a bad system-level add-on of some sort.

Alternately, I just saw a computer with EXACTLY this symptom, and even Safe Mode didn't work. The problem was that there was a flash drive with some sort of hardware problem plugged in; this was apparently causing the system to hang when it got to the point late in the boot process where it tried to mount it. Unplugging the drive caused it to continue booting instantly. The user didn't even realize it was plugged in (it was in the back of an iMac).

Yours is a laptop, so that's probably not your problem. Hopefully it's not hardware (might be worth running the Hardware Test disc if Safe Mode doesn't narrow it down for you).

 

[aquestionmark]

Thanks for the reply.

I've tried starting in safe-mode and it won't work. I've no peripherals plugged into it either. I've done the hardware test also and it said everything was fine with the hardware. So I'm sure its some kind of software problem I just don't know what.

My hard-drive is fairly packed so maybe that might have something to do with it. Anyone have any other ideas? I just want to try everything possible before I send it to someone to get fixed because the warranty is up.

 

[LTX]

If you don't find any other solutions, try this before you pay for a fix:

If you have a desktop computer handy (that supports SATA drives), take the Macbook's hard drive out (easy, just take out the battery and remove the L plate) and put it in your other computer. Back up your Documents, Desktop, Downloads, and anything else you need, then boot from the install DVD, Erase the partition, and reinstall Mac OS X.

 

[Makosuke]

That's a good suggestion. And if you don't have a second computer handy, reinstalling the OS is still what you want to do; if the hardware test checks out, there's a good chance it's just something corrupt on the hard drive (and if the drive is really, really full, that could be the cause).

You want to make sure you have a current backup regardless of what the problem is or what you do to fix it, so that's important to take care of ASAP if you don't already have one. But, if you can get at least a few GB free on the drive you can reinstall the OS without completely erasing the drive ("Archive and Install") which will keep your files and save having to copy them back over.

 

[LTX]

You want to make sure you have a current backup regardless of what the problem is or what you do to fix it, so that's important to take care of ASAP if you don't already have one. But, if you can get at least a few GB free on the drive you can reinstall the OS without completely erasing the drive ("Archive and Install") which will keep your files and save having to copy them back over.

Is it also possible to boot from the install DVD, mount an external drive, and copy files over? I don't remember the result the last time I tried this.