Macbook won't start, stuck on grey screen

[Crougo]

Last night my macbook just stopped working completely. I was downloading a file in bootcamp and about half way through it stopped and everything stopped responding. I wasn't able to do anything at all so I turned the power off and when I turned it on I chose my OSX drive which took about 10 minutes to load. When I got to my desktop it took forever to get everything up then the harddrive started making a terrible noise so I turned the macbook off and since then I haven't been able to get anywhere.

Now when I turn on the power I hear the start up chime but the screen stays on a grey screen and if I leave it on for about 5 minutes a flashing folder with a ? on it will appear. I was guessing that my harddrive is toast, but I'm not even able to boot from the OS X install disk or use it for the hardware test. Does anyone have any ideas of whats going on here? My Macbook is only about 5-6 months old and has never had a problem before.

 

[SFStateStudent]

Do a drop-in...

at the nearest Apple Store, since it is still under warranty for 6-7 months. That's what I do all the time, 'cause making an appointment can take several days to see a genius. I had something like that before, but I used the install disk and everything was fine, though it sounds like yours is not responding. Good luck, and keep us posted.

 

[KruseF1]

Your HD is toast. My Core Duo HD went out a while back and had the same flashing ? when I tried to start it. Apple took care of it for me.

 

[sculptor]

I had a lockup with the Macbook I just got today. I downloaded and installed the iWork demo and when I played the demo it seemed to lock up. I then pressed the power button till it shut off, then turned it on and it worked normally. While unpacking I had noticed that one of the install cd's said something about a hardware test. If you insert disk 1 and press D it will boot to a hardware diagnostic. You can do a standard test or a longer one by checking the checkbox. I did the standard one just because, and my macbook seems fine. When the macbook locked up I had many things going on, I should have probably just waited longer.

Anyway, if you can you might want to run the long diagnostic. But if you can't boot at all you might want to get help.


........Curtis