MBP that won't boot

[Philip Howard]

Hi, I have an old MBP (2006?) and I had just (luckily) backed it up to Time Machine when it locked up. I did the 10 sec power button power down then tried to restart but I only got the grey screen with Apple logo and spinning wheel. I could get no further than that and I tried all the startup methods I could find, e.g. Option-Power, Command-Option-P-R-Power, starting up with power button held for 10 secs until beep, etc. With Option-Power, I only saw the icon for my HD, no safe mode option. In all cases, the computer made the right number of beeps and so on, but pretty soon got to the spinning wheel screen.

Luckily I had my old 80GB (!) HD from 2008 which I put back inside and this loads up fine.

Do you think it is recoverable? I do need to get a bigger one/get compatible with Lion anyway, but I would like make my decision based on the proper facts.

There is one thing I was trying to make some more disk space so I removed some movies and the following files, thinking if it will let me delete these then surely they are not important.....:

they were:
AppKit
CarbonCore
CoreFoundation
Install
IOBluetooth
OSServices
ScreenReader

Is this bad?

The MBP was telling me they were bigger than 200MB which is why I tried it but I think it may have been tricking me...

I would like to know if this user has made a big error, many thanks for your help!

 

[Intell]

Safe Boot is holding down shift at startup. Never delete anything from the /System folder or the /Library folder unless you know exactly what it is or are told to do so by a knowledgeable person. You'll likely have to reinstall Lion.

 

[Philip Howard]

Right, it was shift then. I also tried booting from the Snow Leopard disk but it didn't recognise it. Thanks for your reply, which I must say I agree with.

I have just cleaned the DVD lens... dirtiness might also have been a reason the S.Leopard disk was ejected when I tried it...

 

[Intell]

If the machine refuses to boot from the Snow Leopard disc, then there is a hardware failure or the disc is damaged. No reason why it should not work from the disc.

 

[Philip Howard]

Right! So I will try it again. Thanks again!

 

[Philip Howard]

It worked - on the third attempt!