MacBook won't start up.

[PistolPete.]

I've had my MacBook for a little under a year and installed OS X Leopard when it first came out. I've had no trouble or issues with it until now.

Last night I was surfing the internet and I noticed that everything started to run very slow. Pages weren't loading properly and I had to "Force Quit" Safari several times. Applications, such as iTunes, were running slow as well and took several minutes to even open. Before I went to bed I tried to shut down my MacBook, but the process timed out and froze. I ended up holding down the power button to turn it off.

This morning when I restarted, the Apple screen with the rotating disc underneath the logo comes up but won't start up past this screen. I tried powering off and restarting, but the same thing happens each time. The battery power was around 80% when I first shut down.

Please help, I’m very concerned.

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

I would call Apple and tell them about it or take it to the genius bar at the Apple Store if you have one nearby. I believe you get one year even if you didn't buy Apple Care.

It sounds like you are having some sort of Hard Disk Problem. You can try booting from your Leopard Disk and running disk utility to see if it can be repaired that way.

Hope this helps.

 

[shinchook]

There are many possibilities that could cause this... My first thought (from experience) would be a hard drive failure especially because it was running slow and now won't boot up correctly. It could be faulty ram except the computer wouldn't turn on at all no spinning thing. Lastly it could be a faulty logic board which would also not allow a full boot up most of the time... My vote is a faulty hard drive. Try booting from the disk and doing drive repair. If that doesn't work you could try resetting the power management unit and the pram. Can't remember how to do this but you can try to take the battery out and hold the power button it for 5 secs.

Hope this helps... if not as a last resort you can try a full fresh recover with the disks.

 

[PistolPete.]

If it was a faulty hard drive, wouldn't there be a broken file image instead of the apple logo?

Nearest Apple Store is 5 hours away.
Also, I currently don't have the Leopard disc. I used a license from another Mac user.

I’ll try resetting the PRAM when I go home for lunch.

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

If it was a faulty hard drive, wouldn't there be a broken file image instead of the apple logo?

Nearest Apple Store is 5 hours away.
Also, I currently don't have the Leopard disc. I used a license from another Mac user.

I’ll try resetting the PRAM when I go home for lunch.

Possibly, but that image only appears when it can't find the boot drive. It may just be a corrupt file in the boot process in which case it would find the boot drive and try to start booting before crapping out. You may be able to fix it if you could borrow that leopard disk again.

 

[gershwin27]

Try Safe Mode

Hello,

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode? http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455

You might also try resetting the PRAM/NVRAM. (Wouldn't hurt trying) http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

If you do get to your desktop, I recommend you repair your disk permissions. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751

Thanks,

James

 

[professornegi]

Well I had a similar problem a few months ago. Get the Leopard disc and see if you can boot from it and check the drive with the drive utility. If you can boot from the disc but can't verify the drive or repair it the hard drive probably failed. However, thats good news ( if you don't have a warranty and have to pay for repairs yourself) because if you can't boot from the disc then it might be the logic board (costs considerably more to repair than the hard drive). Just so you know when I tried it the disc took like twenty minutes to be recognized and get going. Either way you will have to send it in for repairs.

Wow, are you sure there isn't an apple certified repair center near by? Apple often certifies smaller places to deal with repairs and using the repair centers can be quite convenient because you just drop if off and two days later you go pick it up.