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Macbook won't boot edit: now booting from DVD

S

someone28624

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 15, 2007
849
11
Buffalo
My room mate's macbook (she has the same exact one I do, see sig for specs) won't boot. It powers on, makes the DVD drive sound, no chime, then shows Apple icon. After a few minutes on that, it goes to a circle with a slash through it.

I've taken out the battery and looked inside. The RAM on slot 1 had a white powder on it. I took that out and tried to boot from just slot 2. No go. I tried reversing which DIMM was in which slot. No go. I tried just booting with RAM from slot 2 in slot 1. Again, nothing.

I turned it off, and put a Leopard install DVD in the drive and turned it on again. It won't boot from the DVD, either. Again, Apple icon, then circle with slash.

Please help, any ideas? I'm kind of assuming hard drive failure. I'm thinking about putting my hard drive in her computer and seeing if it will boot.
 
someone28624 said:
My room mate's macbook (she has the same exact one I do, see sig for specs) won't boot. It powers on, makes the DVD drive sound, no chime, then shows Apple icon. After a few minutes on that, it goes to a circle with a slash through it.

I've taken out the battery and looked inside. The RAM on slot 1 had a white powder on it. I took that out and tried to boot from just slot 2. No go. I tried reversing which DIMM was in which slot. No go. I tried just booting with RAM from slot 2 in slot 1. Again, nothing.

I turned it off, and put a Leopard install DVD in the drive and turned it on again. It won't boot from the DVD, either. Again, Apple icon, then circle with slash.

Please help, any ideas? I'm kind of assuming hard drive failure. I'm thinking about putting my hard drive in her computer and seeing if it will boot.
Click to expand...

If the problem was hard drive failure, it would still boot from DVD
 
After leaving it be in the drive for a bit, it did finally boot from DVD. I went to Disk Utilities, and tried to verify the hard drive. I got "Volume Check Failed. Error: Filestystem verify or repair failed."

So basically, her hard drive done failed, no?
 
HD sounds shot to me.. the reason why its going so slow is i guess it keeps on trying to access the HD, but its damaged so its slowing the whole computer down.
 
I'll run the diagnostics tomorrow. Room mate is gonna be kicking herself for not using time machine, like I recommended. She has all kinds of stuff on there, including a big semester-long term paper she was done with that's due this Tuesday. She has NO copies of it saved anywhere else. Doh!
 
someone28624 said:
I'll run the diagnostics tomorrow. Room mate is gonna be kicking herself for not using time machine, like I recommended. She has all kinds of stuff on there, including a big semester-long term paper she was done with that's due this Tuesday. She has NO copies of it saved anywhere else. Doh!
Click to expand...

shes going to be more then kicking herself. she will be dead if its due on tuesday!!!
 
I can't get into the darn hardware diagnostics for the life of me. I hold D, but nothing happens. The only way I can boot from the CD is to press option, then it just goes into the install screens.
 
someone28624 said:
I can't get into the darn hardware diagnostics for the life of me. I hold D, but nothing happens. The only way I can boot from the CD is to press option, then it just goes into the install screens.
Click to expand...

I thought you could get to it from the installer. There should be an option
 
I really couldn't get into diagnostics. I tried to boot from a Linux live CD and retrieve files, but it wasn't even detecting the hard drive.

I put a spare hard drive I had in it (which already has OS X installed) and that wasn't working, either. I left the hard drive in there, and pulled out the RAM dimm w/ the white power. Volia, booted up.

I basically told her her hard drive and one of her RAM sticks was fried. So she's using it with my old hard drive and 512 mb of RAM right now.

She's upset she lost her files, but not overtly so.

We ordered this stuff today to upgrade:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136314
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227251

How's it look?
 
Only downside to Mac's imo, before the actual OS is active Mac's are a bit complicated... of course, imo... I guess I just understand PC's more in that area
 
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