macbook won't switch on

[mark1239]

Today, after a long time I had the need to swith on my old macbook (the 2006/2007 white model 2ghz).

After connecting the macbook to the magsafe I started using it, but after few minutes it froze, trackpad and keyboard stopped work and all seems to be frozen.
So I presses the power button for some seconds to switch it off.

Then I pressed the power button to switch it on , and since that moment I just heard the hard disk noise that I usually heard 1 time before the system startup , in an infinite loop and the screen remains black, giving no signals.

What's the problem? I suppose that my HD died, Am I right?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Zotaccian]

First, reset PRAM and SMC just in case, instructions from Apple website.

Do you get the Apple chime on boot? If so, if you wait as long as it would usually take to boot, give login details if needed and try using volume controls, do they work? If you don't get the chime then I suppose it is not booting either.

You can try removing the HDD, shut down computer, disconnect charger, remove battery, remove the metallic frame (unscrew the three screws, they will not come off as they're captive type screws. Then you can pull the plastic umm.. handle? to remove the hard disk.

However, I think Macbooks as atleast most laptops should be able to display picture no matter what is the state of hard disk, certainly they can without HDD.

 

[WildCard^]

Zot is right, even with no HD or a dead HD, the machine will power and attempt to boot. Upon the discovery of no boot devices, it gives, I think, a question mark screen.

A laptop, PC or Mac, that don't power or chime has some sort of hardware problem conflicting with a successful boot. But there are other possibilities here.

1) You mentioned hearing the HD power up, like it does at boot. Did you hear the CPU fan kick in, the machine chime? If so, it would seem your LCD is going out. Some of these fixes are cheap but timeconsuming.

2) Did you hear nothing? I would unplug it, take the battery out, wait a few minutes and reattempt a powerup. If you still hear nothing, then your problem is hardware. Confirm your power adapter led is on of course.

If #2, it could be any sort of things that went bad in your old machine. You didn't happen to have it in a cold car and then power it up whilst still frozen, did you? That would cause a possible water damage situation with the condensation.

Tell us exactly what you hear when you hit the power, if anything.

Good luck.

 

[mark1239]

After something like 10 hours I tried to switch it on and it works normally.

I didn't hear nothing except the hard disk, screen was black, keyboard didn't work( I tried the caps button to check if there was the green light).

To be clear I just heard the noise of HD that in this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHZ6BJDRwxE ) you can heard at 00:03 infinitely repeated.

I tried to reset pram, smc but it didn't work.
Now the mbook seems to work fine.

 

[WildCard^]

ah, glad it worked out. Let's hope it works long term for you.

The noise on 0.03 of the video was the superdrive I think. When you say infinitely repeated, are you saying it clicked like that over and over?

I guess I didn't catch that point originally. Is there a disk in your superdrive? Maybe the drive was erroring out.. If it gives you problem in the future, might be solved with a simple disconnect of the drive inside.

Good luck!