MacBook2,1 Won't boot up

[branchline]

Hi and Happy New Year,

Newbie here, and in the middle of writing a final paper for a Masters Degree when my 14 month old MacBook2,1 locked up on me this morning - noting this was just after saving a Word file and as I was getting up to go and get my external hard drive that I cleared space on last evening to do a backup! I've lost about two weeks of work and need to recover it urgently.

The notebook locked up solid so I had to turn the notebook off by holding the 'power on' button down. On turning it back on again I got the beep, the blue screen, then the apple logo followed by the rotating clock symbol which just keep on rotating. I did this several times with the same results.

The battery is charged up (power is connected anyway) and there was nothing else attached to the computer, ie printer, memory stick etc at the time. I have removed and refitted the battery - just for good measure of course!

I've managed to insert and run the OS X disk 1 and run a hardware test, both normal and extended. It successfully passed with no faults found several times. However, when I try 'Restart' it just goes to the blue screen, apple logo and clock symbol again.

By holding the option key down on turn on, I get the HD and Disk icons on the screen but again when I click on the arrows the macbook goes into the blue screen routine again.

Is there anything else I can do myself?

Would appreciate any assistance

Regards

BH

 

[BlueRevolution]

Well, the bad news is that it sounds like your issues are hard drive-related. The good news is that it may only affect OS X's ability to boot from the drive, and your data may still be accessible normally. If not, there are data recovery utilities that may work for you, so all is not lost.

The version of OS X that runs on the install disks is rather stripped-down and only gives you limited access to the tools you could run on a real Mac. Do you have an external hard drive that you can run a fresh OS X install on, just temporarily? If you have another Mac, that's even better. I think the first step is to take a look from the outside and see what we can see.

It sounds like some serious stuff! I'll do whatever I can to help.

 

[branchline]

Many thanks for the response,

I don't have an external MAC drive (Memory sticks don't count?) but do have a G3 in storage I can reserect relatively easily, not sure what its running on though as it was my sons.

Just a query on the harddrive, does the hardware test only check the 'mother board' side of things rather than the HD itself?

I'll look at this when the sun comes up and get back to you, its presently 0405 here and I'm back to bed for a couple more hours of kip...

Kind Regards

BH

 

[BlueRevolution]

I don't have an external MAC drive (Memory sticks don't count?) but do have a G3 in storage I can reserect relatively easily, not sure what its running on though as it was my sons.

Well, any external drive will work, so long as it's Mac-formatted, which can be done easily enough. You may also be able to boot to memory sticks. I've never tried and my search results were inconclusive. You'd need at least an 8 GB stick, though. If it works, it will work very slowly.

Your G3 is probably running Jaguar or before, which is pretty old for running diagnostic utilities. I suppose we could use it as an external hard drive in a pinch...

I believe hardware test checks the basic integrity of the drive but not each sector, which is why we may need a third-party utility for the purpose.

 

[branchline]

Well, New Zeland remains on holiday, all the computer people are returning to work on Monday 5th!

I've tracked down a USB CD drive (have to buy it) and the shop can format it. Will this do and if so what do I require in terms of software? I can't get the drive until Sunday (tomorrow for us here) now.

Let me know what your thoughts are?

Thanks again,

Regards

BH

 

[BlueRevolution]

A CD drive? Isn't the same as what you have in your MacBook, the one that is working perfectly fine?

 

[branchline]

Hi BR,

Apologies re 48 hour silence, I had to deal with no water at our house on Sunday just prior to a house full of guests coming for tea (and I was cooking!).

Managed to get another Macbook from a friend who looked at mine using a 'firewall lead' (?). He runs a publication amendment department which uses Macs so has a few clues. However, he couldn't see the harddrive on my machine no matter what he did even trying to reload the operating system.

Do you have any suggestions from here?

Thanks

BH

 

[BlueRevolution]

Apologies re 48 hour silence, I had to deal with no water at our house on Sunday just prior to a house full of guests coming for tea (and I was cooking!).

Ooch!

Managed to get another Macbook from a friend who looked at mine using a 'firewall lead' (?). He runs a publication amendment department which uses Macs so has a few clues. However, he couldn't see the harddrive on my machine no matter what he did even trying to reload the operating system.

"Firewall lead"?

I suggest you connect the two computers with a FireWire cable and start yours in target disk mode. Your computer should (should!) appear as a drive on your friend's computer's desktop.

 

[branchline]

Hi there, please excuse my poor terminology, its been a long, long time since I built my own PC's and wandered around the inards of a computer, and hence why I didn't mention we actually tried this, but again the harddrive could not be located on the other laptop through the 'FireWire' cable. He was not prepared to reload the operating SW incase it blew away my files but at the end of the day he still couldn't see the HD to load the SW onto anyway.

It's interesting what I'm getting here with this as the friend who bought his MacBook at the same time and lost his HD a couple of months ago only got a grey screen on his laptop when turning it on, nothing else it was confirmed as the HD and once replaced worked fine.

I can at least carry out the hardware test and see the disk drive. However, when I boot off the CD (I left it a bit longer this time and it booted up) it takes me through to the screen saying 'select a destination' but no drive option comes up in the window.

So obviously the laptop has some functionality, the keyboard is working, the screen works, it can read the CD, it looks like it just doesn't see the harddrive.

Is there anything you can suggest or is it time to take it to a repair facility?

Many thanks for your time so far,

Regards

BH

 

[BlueRevolution]

Huh. That is troubling. It doesn't show up in Disk Utility, does it? You can run it off your install disk; just access it under the Utilities menu. At the very least, I would expect the drive to appear on the left hand side of the window, where the install disk is displayed.