So if a MacBook boots to a solid grey screen...

[M A V I C]

Friend dropped off a MacBook that isn't booting. I get the startup chime, a grey screen, and that's it. I've tried booting off of a disc (10.5 and DW.) Holding down option the DW disc comes up, but when I click the arrow to boot from it, nothing happens.

I reset the SMC, same issue.

Does this mean the logic board is bad?

[Mini 9]

if you have bootable firewire drive, try that.

[saintyohann]

Bad hard drive.

[M A V I C]

MacBook boots from Firewire? What about USB?

And if the HD is bad, shouldn't it still boot from a disc?

[C(-)ris]

Sometimes a bad HD stops it from booting at all. Pull the HD and see if it will boot off the cd or an external drive.

[M A V I C]

I'm a MacBook noob. I pulled the battery out, but don't see specs listed. It's white. Is there somewhere I can find out which model, and thus disassembly instructions, via serial number?

Edit: nevermind, figured out it was the original. Wow, that's easy to remove the HD.

[jdc]

All Intel Macs boot from USB.

Takes a standard 2.5" SATA laptop drive, 9.5mm tall.

750 gigs is the largest you can go.

When you pop out the battery, you will see the instructions for taking out the ram, so remove the bracket and you will see the ram and the drive. Just pull the drive by the tab.

[M A V I C]

jdc wrote:
All Intel Macs boot from USB.

Takes a standard 2.5" SATA laptop drive, 9.5mm tall.

750 gigs is the largest you can go.

When you pop out the battery, you will see the instructions for taking out the ram, so remove the bracket and you will see the ram and the drive. Just pull the drive by the tab.

Yeah, I thought all Intel Macs booted from USB. I've pulled the drive. It boots from the DW disc fine now. I put the drive in an enclosure and am making an image of it on another machine.

[Winston]

Removing a drive from an original MacBook really is nice, isn't it? I wish iBooks had been like that.

If the drive is working in an external case it makes me wonder if it wasn't seated properly in the MacBook. An odd connection to the drive could explain it not wanting to start even from the optical drive.


Good luck.

- Winston

[M A V I C]

Winston wrote:
Removing a drive from an original MacBook really is nice, isn't it? I wish iBooks had been like that.

Other than trays in servers, I think that's the easiest HD removal I've ever done. Yes, very nice.

If the drive is working in an external case it makes me wonder if it wasn't seated properly in the MacBook. An odd connection to the drive could explain it not wanting to start even from the optical drive.

DiskWarrior is currently telling me "Speed reduced by disk malfunction: 5" so I'm pretty sure it has problems. I wish SMART worked over USB.