Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

kitjarik

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2011
1
0
Hi guys,

One friend has dropped me a Macbook4,1 that "won't turn on". She said smith about a glass of water, spilled on it, then if worked for a while (several weeks or so), then some keys stopped working, then it stopped booting at all.

When I brought it home, i tried to turn it on an it showed me the OS X Login Screen. I didn't know the password, so decided to turn it off. That was the first and the last time i saw it working. Now here's how it works: I press the power button, hear the chime, see the Apple Logo, bang — it turns off. Sometimes it just freezes on Apple logo, showing the spinning progress wheel. Sometimes it turns off on this wheel.

What concerns me is that it could boot when I turned it on for the first time. Which makes me think there might be some easy-to-fix issue with it.

I tried resetting the SMC — that didn't work. I can't Option-boot from USB and Command+S-boot to check the HDD — maybe the keyboard doesn't work or smith is just wrong with EFI.

I'm planning to find a USB-keyboard and try to boot with it. Can anybody confirm that a third-party keyboard will let me Option-boot? (e.g. by pressing the Alt key)

Any other ideas are extremely appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
A third party keyboard will let you option boot.

I suspect the HD may be bad or have corruption. Boot in verbose mode and see what comes on the screen.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.