New member, new problem: Macbook 7.1 no sound

[jimbob200521]

Hello all. This is my first post here and I'll admit I'm mainly a PC guy but have always had an odd soft spot in my heart for Mac's/Apple products. I recently brought a shiny new iPad Mini into our home as a Christmas gift for my wife and she absolutely loves it (I'm also pleased to report my PC's around the house haven't ganged up on it yet hah). I have a few older machines (G3's and G4's) in the closet that I pull out every now and again to get nostalgic with but they really aren't useful for anything modern I want to do with them. I also have a Mac Mini coming in from eBay soon that I plan to upgrade and use as a media center but I'm getting off topic. Anywho, without spending a whole thread getting into why I am interested in Mac's, I'll get down to it.

I have found a locally used (but in good condition) Macbook 7.1. It's got a Core 2 Duo in it at 2.4ghz with 2gb of RAM, a 250gb HD, and I believe the GeForce 320M video card. I scored this little beauty for $75 but there's one issue: no sound. They tell me they can start it in Safe Mode and it works fine (but again, no sound). However, when they try to start it in "normal" mode, it won't fully boot: you turn it on, log in, and it hangs on the login screen. Also of note is they tell me that there isn't a chime when you first turn on the computer, either. Possible the headphone jack is still thinking there's headphones plugged in?

Searching google hasn't yielded me many useful results. So far when I get my hands on it tomorrow I'm going to reset the PRAM, NVRAM, as well as the SMC in hopes this fixes it. If that doesn't do it, what should my next steps be? I'm debating upgrading to a newer OS (Mavericks or later, possibly) but don't know if I want to put too much into it if I can't get some sound out of the old girl.

So any thoughts to welcome a new Mac member to the forums? I hope this isn't too big of an issue as the lack of threads/info I found around online involving this specific set of problems was scare. Thanks in advance, guys and gals.

 

[Bioshock.Rocks]

I work at a recycling company and we get these in a LOT. I usually get some with a red light emitting from the headphone port and when I try to raise the volume i get a circle with a slash in the middle indicating that sound is disabled, but when I plug in headphones I hear and see that the volume goes up and down without any issues.

The first thing I do is do a PRAM reset and an SMC reset, that usually works. If not I resort to a bit of rubbing alcohol and a q-tip. With the unit off I would stick in a not-so-wet q-tip with alcohol and move in and out and twist inside the headphone jack.

Now if that doesn't work well I'd have to say you're pretty much out of luck.

Yet again, I had some that wouldn't work after those steps but after I installed El Capitan on the unit the sound would work without any issues.

I would say go for it and upgrade the unit to a good 8GB of RAM (4GB is a bit too low as that is what I got my mom and its a bit slow) I think these macs are pretty nice looking and preform pretty well with the latest OS X.

 

[jimbob200521]

I work at a recycling company and we get these in a LOT. I usually get some with a red light emitting from the headphone port and when I try to raise the volume i get a circle with a slash in the middle indicating that sound is disabled, but when I plug in headphones I hear and see that the volume goes up and down without any issues.

The first thing I do is do a PRAM reset and an SMC reset, that usually works. If not I resort to a bit of rubbing alcohol and a q-tip. With the unit off I would stick in a not-so-wet q-tip with alcohol and move in and out and twist inside the headphone jack.

Now if that doesn't work well I'd have to say you're pretty much out of luck.

Yet again, I had some that wouldn't work after those steps but after I installed El Capitan on the unit the sound would work without any issues.

I would say go for it and upgrade the unit to a good 8GB of RAM (4GB is a bit too low as that is what I got my mom and its a bit slow) I think these macs are pretty nice looking and preform pretty well with the latest OS X.

Thanks for the response! The seller messaged me last night saying that he didn't know why he didn't try it before but he "reset" the Macbook and the sound now works, go figure! So I'm very optimistic about this venture. I know I'm going to go up to 4gb of RAM at least but who knows, I may spring for 8gb. Another upgrade I want to do is snag an SSD to put in as I am a huge fan of the difference they make in performance. I also want to dual boot into Windows 7 so hopefully this all goes well.

One more issue I neglected to mention is the Macbook is subject to the rubberized bottom issue they had shortly after they came out. I know Apple did a free repair of this issue when it was new but I'm not so sure they still offer this service. I'm going to give it a shot but I'm not to optimistic about that one.

Anywho, thanks again!