Macbook Won't Boot Up

[ews5761]

Just recently got back from a visit to my local Apple store in regards to a faulty power adapter. My Macbook started up fine at the store, as it has over the past two years. However, after getting home and trying to turn it on, the laptop fails to boot up. It sits at the grey screen with the Apple-logo and spinning progress circle, all while the fan starts to whirl as if my macbook were on fire.

I've experienced a failed hard-drive before, so I know of the folder w/question mark screen, and this screen is not like that. I've also tried booting up in "Safe-Mode," but that won't work as well. I do have a start-up disk and external hard-drive... I'm just curious to see what other options I might have before reinstalling Leopard. Any thoughts?

 

[MrM]

Just recently got back from a visit to my local Apple store in regards to a faulty power adapter. My Macbook started up fine at the store, as it has over the past two years. However, after getting home and trying to turn it on, the laptop fails to boot up. It sits at the grey screen with the Apple-logo and spinning progress circle, all while the fan starts to whirl as if my macbook were on fire.

I've experienced a failed hard-drive before, so I know of the folder w/question mark screen, and this screen is not like that. I've also tried booting up in "Safe-Mode," but that won't work as well. I do have a start-up disk and external hard-drive... I'm just curious to see what other options I might have before reinstalling Leopard. Any thoughts?

Try booting from the CD, run disk utility and run the repair option. See if that does anything for you.

 

[MacBH928]

some one used to shut down the electricity on my iMac when it was on sleep mode. It started fine, but after a certain number of times I kind of got what you have. It won't load the OS, just start up , show me the gray apple logo and shuts down.

I used DiskWarrior and it saved my life. I can swear by this thing. Put it on a cd(if downloaded) or if you buy a physical copy, insert it in the cd tray and hold C while the computer boots up. Follow instructions.
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

This used to work like magic on a G4 800mhz, i am not sure how it works with current intel macs

 

[ews5761]

Hey-

Thanks for the replies. I was able to boot from my Leopard DVD and use Disk Utility to repair my hard-drive. And from what I've read, Disk-Warrior seems like it would've worked as well, but as it is, the Leopard Disk is already bought & paid for, so clearly that was option #1.

If I may ask one last question, is there any reason in particular that might cause such a problem? I understand that technology is what it is, and things can happen for a number of reasons, I'm just trying to learn as much from this experience as I can so I know where to start if this were to happen again.

 

[MacBH928]

Well I am not expert myself, but in my example(I am not sure what happened with you)
basically the hard disk was damaged, I think the data got screwed up or something because of improper shutting down of the system.
It survived a number of times, but I guess then it got too screwed up to start up.
So this really fixed everything.

In Diskwarrior it shows you how much of your HD is screwed up, I think I had 7% when it stopped working properly. It is really magic, I still can't believe it