⟐ Edited May 10, 2010 at 4:08 pm -0700

⟐ Answered June 2, 2010 at 1:20 pm -0700

⟐ Answer accepted June 2, 2010 at 11:32 pm -0700

⟐ Answered February 24, 2010 at 12:30 pm -0700

Thanks, Lucy

⟐ Answered June 8, 2010 at 2:54 pm -0700

When I press the power button, the power light on the front near the IR sensor comes on, and the screen flashes (as my old one did), but there's no noise from the optical drive and nothing else happens.

I'm going to take it apart again tomorrow and follow the directions on this site. - I'm hoping it's simply a cord that isn't fully connecting. Since the machine was working fine this morning (just with a cracked screen) it doesn't make sense to me for it to be anything serious like the logic board. Any ideas?

⟐ Commented October 22, 2010 at 9:32 pm -0700

however when you press the power button, you get a clicking sound from the optical drive but then nothing else, the battery is charging fine from the machine when the powerlead is plugged in, but the machine just refuses to start up, any ideas?

thanks

⟐ Answered August 13, 2010 at 12:38 am -0700

⟐ Commented October 12, 2010 at 8:38 am -0700

⟐ Commented October 13, 2010 at 10:03 pm -0700

⟐ Commented October 7, 2010 at 2:28 am -0700

sprevit@alice.it

⟐ Answered September 14, 2010 at 11:05 am -0700

I'd appreciate it very much.

⟐ Answered September 15, 2010 at 12:03 pm -0700

⟐ Commented October 2, 2010 at 10:27 am -0700

However, I can boot to Safe Mode with all icons and mouse pointer. I have done a disk check and a verify permissions check. Nothing really major in the logs.

I tried to boot from DVD, but the drive just spits it out. I will replace the DVD drive. But I'm not able to boot it even with the DVD unplugged.

Any ideas?

Update

Found that the issue was two fold: The new cd drive helped the machine boot properly. I was able to reinstall the OS. Also, it turns out the FireWire port is bad. I did a little search on the intertubes and found that this can be overcome by moving the .kext files out of the Extensions folder. Because this machine is going to be used by my niece and she would have no reason to use FireWire, I went ahead and moved all IOFireWire related .kext files out and the machine is now functioning properly. The only issue I noticed was a problem with a little bit of a "stutter" in the OS behavior. When opening safari, the machine will hang slightly. I've watched for the logs, but find nothing related. I might have fixed it with the upgrade to 10.6.4...

⟐ Edited September 19, 2010 at 7:36 pm -0700

I am at a loss as to what it can be. A bad drive, controller issue, motherboard????

⟐ Answer deleted July 4, 2011 at 9:25 am -0700

Update

If I power the machine on I hear the super drive start then it stops. Then it starts again. Then that stops nothing happens. Every once in a while the machine will startand run. Eventually it will shut itself off. Then nothing will start up with power button. I have tried the basic resets thsyt did not work.

⟐ Answer edited April 4, 2012 at 7:44 pm -0700

⟐ Commented December 6, 2010 at 11:07 am -0700

all was fine till i left it on over night , it wouldn't wake up from sleep so shut down and the same problem came back .

tried reseting the pram by disconnecting the pram battery and unplugging machine for two hours .

still didn't work then i took out one of the ram chips and tried and again , this time i got a chime but still a blank screen .

so put both ram chip backs and went back to original problem

⟐ Edited March 9, 2011 at 7:08 pm -0700

The immediate issue: As soon as the device starts to boot, it immediatedly powers off.

Exactly what happens:

1. I plug it in and hit the power button. The fan comes on, it makes a noise and in a few seconds a grey screen with the sproket (?) comes up.
2. The screen goes black again for a few seconds.
3. The screen turns blue, these is a mouse cursor and then the Apple OS X logo comes up with a loading bar.
4. The bar loads for approximately 1-3 seconds (roughly the 2-5% though it does not display numbers) and then the whole system powers off abruptly.

First startup: It did this once the first time I started it up, but has not done it since. The first time I powered up the computer something that looked like a Mac Command Line Interface ran for a few minutes. It was a black screen with lines of white text. I should have taken down exactly what it said, but didn't. I remember it had 'mDNS responder' 'will retry if fails in 60 seconds' and it tried to run something several times, which failed repeatedly. After 3-4 fails, it stopped. When I hit enter it asked me for a login.

Background: The device was given to me as not functioning by a friend. It had not been powered on in several years when I received it. He is notoriously quite rough on his possessions (it took me 20 minutes just to clean the grime off the outside of the device with alcohol and Q-tips). My friend is not a 'technology person' so his information about what was actually wrong with it was a little spotty. He mentioned the hard drive 'might' be bad and that he was having issues with the power cord and/or DC in plug. I bought a brand new power adapter/cord for it but the laptop does not seem to want to power up sometimes unless I fiddle with the cord a little. It also feels loose. In short, I'm expecting to possibly replace the DC in board and harddrive with the tutorials I found here.

Thanks in advance for any and all help. Please let me know if any additional information or pictures might help.

⟐ Edited January 28, 2011 at 6:06 pm -0700

⟐ Commented February 20, 2011 at 12:29 pm -0700

I have a macbook pro that when I tried to boot it up it started flashing a folder with a ?. I have tried holding C when I restart it and nothing happens. I tried holding Cmd Alt P R and nothing happens. I tried reformatting the hard drive. Tried a different hard drive. I also tried using the compatible RAM that I have in my 17" MacBook Pro but nothing seems to work. I even tried removing the RAM and the lithium battery for a day to see if that would wipe out the password but it also didn't work. I also even tried installing the OS on the spare hard drive through my 17"Mac by removing the hard drive and installing the spare one and installing the OS on it; i hooked it back up to the 15" and the problem persists. And for some reason when I hold Alt it shows a lock with block to write the password but I don't know it and the original owner doesn't remember it either. But when I remove one of the sticks of RAM and hold the Alt button it shows the recovery CD, I double click on it and it goes to the gray apple screen and stays there.

ANY help is greatly appreciated.

⟐ Answered August 18, 2012 at 8:33 am -0700

My experience; First boot got to a login screen and there was obviously something wrong with the display. It's hard to describe, but the splash screen showed random flickers and the color/contrast was obviously off. I didn't have the keyboard handy, so only the mouse (from another PC) was plugged in. I have no passwords, but thought that I could get into the guest account. Unfortunately, the only guest account was "guest1" and password protected. I noticed that the machine is running OS X, though I have no idea which version, as I couldn't log in.

After the first 2-3 boots, the machine seemed to run into more problems. Sometimes, after a soft-reset, the machine wouldn't get to the login screen. Instead, I would see a black screen and after approx. 20 seconds, the fan would go to high speed and the machine appeared stuck. Display problems persisted. After getting an Apple wireless keyboard, I tried "zapping the PRAM"and booting into single-user mode to bypass the login (with varying degrees of success, none of which got me to desktop.) I then resigned myself to fixing the display and boot issues.

Using the guides here, I opened the case to check for obvious hardware issues. Employing the typical precautions, I carefully checked for "bad caps" and LED status lights. LED status showed nothing out of sorts and I could find no "bad caps". I ran fsck from a "command t" prompt and the machine reported HD was ok. In my admittedly ignorant assessment, the computer seems physically healthy.

What can I try next?

Thanks in advance.

⟐ Commented October 17, 2011 at 10:54 pm -0700

⟐ Edited April 1, 2012 at 6:46 am -0700

⟐ Commented April 18, 2012 at 7:07 pm -0700

⟐ Edited July 6, 2012 at 8:30 am -0700

I'm thinking that it has something to do with the magnetic closure not functioning properly. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Update

Man... I forgot all about this.. Thanks to those who answered! Apple wanted 800.00 to replace the whole case. Yeah, I had my iPad sitting on mine when it happened.. and it even happened with my wife's recently. Now I just avoid placing anything that has magnets ((iPad!!!)) on it.

Thanks again everyone!

⟐ Edited February 19, 2013 at 3:09 pm -0700

I have two problems with my computer (5 years old).

Problem #1:

When I boot my PC it usually crashes at loading the operating system (GNU/Linux, when processing the udev events to be precise) OR doesn't boot up at all. The problem occured for the first time some months ago. Firstly it happend only occasionally, but by and by it occured more and more often. By now it usually takes me up to 30 mins until I have booted successfully.

I have drawn a flowchart diagram of my boot problem; since I find it hard to describe it with words only, I hope that is all right.

Link: http://imgur.com/YzY2Z

I suspect that my power supply unit* is conking out due to the different numbers in power consumption I have measured and some quiet sizzling noises it sometimes makes. But I'm not an expert, so I might also be totally wrong. :)

Unfortunately I don't have another one lying around, so I cannot check if the culprit really is the PSU.

Can anyone think of a different reason?

• be quiet! Straight Power 700W

Life time according to the manual: 100.000 hrs (24/7 for ~12 years)

Problem #2:

About three days ago, my PC started to print weird stuff (see pictures below) to the monitor.

I tested a second monitor and a second cable -> same artifacts, so the problem seems to be a component within the computer (video card: Asus geforce 8800 GT).

Here are some pictures: http://imgur.com/a/H5mLN#0

Any ideas on where the problem is, and how to solve it (or may it be linked to #1)?

⟐ Answered October 5, 2012 at 9:29 am -0700