Need Help Macpro 2008 Intel [boot problems]

[Mac07]

Ok first of all I apologize for being a noob.

I haven't have had any problems with my macbook pro so not very familiar w/ recovery etc on a MAC.

So my battery started not to charge....whenever I unpluged the power the macbook would instantly die...yeah not fun but wait for it...

so I boot up and it is stuck on the white screen (apple/kernal)

Now I assume that the os got corrupted when I lost power.

This is a Snow Leopard OS.

I can get to the disk boot but not sure what to do.

Is there a way to copy the data of the hd?

Can I restore the os w/ loosing date?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[justperry]

Ok first of all I apologize for being a noob.

I haven't have had any problems with my macbook pro so not very familiar w/ recovery etc on a MAC.

So my battery started not to charge....whenever I unpluged the power the macbook would instantly die...yeah not fun but wait for it...

so I boot up and it is stuck on the white screen (apple/kernal)

Now I assume that the os got corrupted when I lost power.

This is a Snow Leopard OS.

I can get to the disk boot but not sure what to do.

Is there a way to copy the data of the hd?

Can I restore the os w/ loosing date?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Hold the Shift key when starting up, this will safe boot the Mac, does this work.
If you have an install disk boot from it and repair the disk with disk Utilities, when you get to the installer you should go to the Menu Bar, Disk Utilities is there, under tools I think or Utilities, then in Disk Utility click on the Disk (HD) and click repair.
If it repairs the disk you are most likely be able to boot again.

After doing this reset SMC , it might help with the battery User, it reset Power Management.

Resetting the System Management Controller - Support - Apple

 

[GGJstudios]

This may help, if you haven't seen them already:

Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup
Troubleshooting: My computer won't turn on
Mac doesn't boot​

 

[Mac07]

Hold the Shift key when starting up, this will safe boot the Mac, does this work.
If you have an install disk boot from it and repair the disk with disk Utilities, when you get to the installer you should go to the Menu Bar, Disk Utilities is there, under tools I think or Utilities, then in Disk Utility click on the Disk (HD) and click repair.
If it repairs the disk you are most likely be able to boot again.

After doing this reset SMC , it might help with the battery User, it reset Power Management.

Resetting the System Management Controller - Support - Apple

Repairing....fingers crossed!

----------

Hold the Shift key when starting up, this will safe boot the Mac, does this work.
If you have an install disk boot from it and repair the disk with disk Utilities, when you get to the installer you should go to the Menu Bar, Disk Utilities is there, under tools I think or Utilities, then in Disk Utility click on the Disk (HD) and click repair.
If it repairs the disk you are most likely be able to boot again.

After doing this reset SMC , it might help with the battery User, it reset Power Management.

Resetting the System Management Controller - Support - Apple

Disk utility can't repair this disk Back up and reformat....so how do I back that drive?

 

[justperry]

Repairing....fingers crossed!

----------



Disk utility can't repair this disk Back up and reformat....so how do I back that drive?

Try booting safe mode first, hold Shift key at startup.

Backing up, you need an external HD for this, if you don't have you can't.

There is a program which might be able to repair the disk, but again you need to have an external bootable system from which you can do this.

 

[Mac07]

Try booting safe mode first, hold Shift key at startup.

Backing up, you need an external HD for this, if you don't have you can't.

There is a program which might be able to repair the disk, but again you need
ro have an external bootable system from which you can do this.

Ok, thanks for the quick response!

So shift does not seem to be doing anything.... hold shift and press power right?

I do have an external drive, one on a wireless network, and a stand alone I use on my pc and mac.

 

[justperry]

Ok, thanks for the quick response!

So shift does not seem to be doing anything.... hold shift and press power right?

I do have an external drive, one on a wireless network, and a stand alone I use on my pc and mac.

Hold shift right after power, but I am positive that it will still work the way you did it.

Tip, always make a bootable backup, this way the problems can be solved much easier.
If you have a 8 GB USB stick, install OS X on that stick, then try repair again, diswarrior (App) many times can repair a disk where DU can not, but it is not free.

 

[justperry]

Does the Mac startup from the Snow Leopard DVD, if yes you can install a clean OS on a USB stick, the stick has to be a minimum of 8 GB.

To do this, insert DVD into the Mac, then hold the C key instantly after startup, hold it until you see the grey Apple screen with the Apple on it, you'll here the DVD drive reading by this time.
It will take a bit of time before the Installer starts, the USB stick should already be inserted before startup.
Now, when you get to the installer there is some mumbo jumbo agree blah blah, after this you have to choose the USB stick to choose the Install to, be careful to choose the USB stick.
Let the Installer do it's job, when finished it should restart, hold the Option key when it restarts, this will get you into the boot screen, choose the USB stick and hit enter.
Now, you should get into the USB, you have to fill out name and address and so on, after this you'll get into OS X.
Make the Username exactly the same as the one on the Internal disk with the same password, this is important since you then can see everything from the original install on the internal disk.
From there you could try to repair the internal disk with Disk Utilities, if this does not work you could try to download diskWarrior and see if this works, I don't know if it is a trail, you'll have to find out yourself.

But, by this time you might be able to see the contents of the internal disk, if so you can then copy the Pictures, Music and whatever you need to an external backup, you need a disk as large as the data you want to copy.
The data you need is in /Users/****/####
where **** is your User Name.
where #### is the folders data you want to copy.

 

[Mac07]

Update
***
So took the macbook into Best Buy after much aggravation and stress. I did end up formatting the hard drive after getting several errors. I was hoping they would junk it but.....they replaced the hard drive and battery. So hopefully it will be issue free. Thank you to everyone, especially justperry.

Everything seems to be working fine, but I lost my iwork and cannot find my original box Is there a way to recover it?