MacBook won't boot up! Please help!

[Jojo430]

Hey everyone. I have a Mid 2007 White Macbook and I can't seem to get it to boot up past the "Grey screen with apple logo and loading wheel". I've tried just about everything I could find:

Zap PRAM: Yes
Try to boot into safe mode: I get a progress bar, goes up about half way, and then disappears.
Wait: I've waited almost 5 hours now, not convinced.
Single User mode: Yes, thats the only thing I can effectively boot into. I've done "fsck -fy" multiple times, and still no luck.
Boot with Leopard install disks: I've tried, but to no prevail. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I bought it second hand?
So yea. You're wondering how I screwed up majorly enough to have this currently useless $700 paperweight? Well it started with me designing an iPhone app, but I DESPERATELY needed Xcode to get the job done. As my Macbook was running on 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, not much i could do there. So my half-asleep half plain stupid self, borrowed my friends Lion copy to install onto my outdated mac. Yes, I am THAT stupid. All went well until it had installed, and had to reboot. Ever since I was left with this problem. I'm thinking of heading to a genius bar-I feel sick-and letting them check it out, but as a pre-final resort, I decided to head here. Any help? Thanks!
~Joseph

 

[RedCroissant]

Hey everyone. I have a Mid 2007 White Macbook and I can't seem to get it to boot up past the "Grey screen with apple logo and loading wheel". I've tried just about everything I could find:

Zap PRAM: Yes
Try to boot into safe mode: I get a progress bar, goes up about half way, and then disappears.
Wait: I've waited almost 5 hours now, not convinced.
Single User mode: Yes, thats the only thing I can effectively boot into. I've done "fsck -fy" multiple times, and still no luck.
Boot with Leopard install disks: I've tried, but to no prevail. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I bought it second hand?
So yea. You're wondering how I screwed up majorly enough to have this currently useless $700 paperweight? Well it started with me designing an iPhone app, but I DESPERATELY needed Xcode to get the job done. As my Macbook was running on 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, not much i could do there. So my half-asleep half plain stupid self, borrowed my friends Lion copy to install onto my outdated mac. Yes, I am THAT stupid. All went well until it had installed, and had to reboot. Ever since I was left with this problem. I'm thinking of heading to a genius bar-I feel sick-and letting them check it out, but as a pre-final resort, I decided to head here. Any help? Thanks!
~Joseph

Do you know anyone that has a Mac with Snow Leopard still on it? If so, you could connect your MB to theirs via firewire and just clone the OS. SL is not linked with an AppleID, so you could do that, then set up a new account afterwards, and then delete the old account. If you can find a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner that's free, use it and you should be fine.

And when you tried booting from the install disks, did you get an install disk that had the same OS as your machine did when you first bought it? Did you use disk utility to actually erase the main partition and then attempt a fresh install?

I thought XCode and the developer tools were available for free through Apple for really any of the OS versions. I downloaded it for free and have it on my iBook G4 running OS X 10.5.8. I'm not saying this to make you feel stupid or anything, but when your computer is fixed, just navigate to apple's developer website and perform a search for the developer tools for your OS.

 

[Jojo430]

Hey,
Thanks for the very quick reply! I've tried to restore my mac via firewire in Target disc mode, and my friends Macbook Pro (Late-2009?) model, couldn't recognize my hard drive, and he is running Mountain Lion. I also installed it on top of Snow Leopard, and yes, I have literally physically face palmed. I installed it from the mac App Store, and that's probably why. Any other ideas? Thanks again!
~Joey

 

[Jojo430]

Hey,
Thanks for the very quick reply! I've tried to restore my mac from via firewire in Target disc mode, and my friends Macbook Pro (Late-2009?) model, couldn't recognize my hard drive, and he is running Mountain Lion. Thanks again!
~Joey

 

[RedCroissant]

Hey,
Thanks for the very quick reply! I've tried to restore my mac via firewire in Target disc mode, and my friends Macbook Pro (Late-2009?) model, couldn't recognize my hard drive, and he is running Mountain Lion. I also installed it on top of Snow Leopard, and yes, I have literally physically face palmed. I installed it from the mac App Store, and that's probably why. Any other ideas? Thanks again!
~Joey

Are you saying you bricked your MB? If not, then perhaps you can boot from an external that happens to have the proper OS on it and then recognize it that way using CCC. I have been able to do this with current MB and MBP by using a cloned OS of mine that's on a former internal HDD that I placed in a HDD docking station. On that drive I have the following OSes cloned: OS X Tiger, Leopard, and Lion.

I would also offer my services but I don't know if you would be willing to ship the computer to me since you don't even know me. I wouldn't charge anything and you would only have to pay shipping. But I could easily(most likely) fix your machine. Regardless of what you choose, good luck and I'll be glad to answer any other questions you might have.

 

[Jojo430]

Ugh, only if i had an external HD. I would of had this problem fixed ages ago. I could buy one, which I probably am going to end up doing one way or another. Can you think of any other fixes? Thanks again!
~Joey

 

[RedCroissant]

Ugh, only if i had an external HD. I would of had this problem fixed ages ago. I could buy one, which I probably am going to end up doing one way or another. Can you think of any other fixes? Thanks again!
~Joey

using an external is the probably the one that I am most familiar with and the easiest to use as well. I've done it to fix my intel iMac, my mom's intel MBP, and my two PPC Macs(iMac G5 and my iBook G4). I actually use my former internal HDD as an external where I have my cloned OSes stored just in case I need to reinstall them.