Badges

Successful Repairs

Guide Image

MacBook Pro 15" Unibody Late 2008 and Early 2009 Upper Case

The ins and outs of replacing your upper case.

Guide Image

PowerBook G4 Aluminum 15" 1.5-1.67 GHz Hard Drive Replacement

You can install hard drives up to 12.5mm thick.

Answers

  • Answer to: Mac Mini wont boot Nov 10 @ 12:03 PM

    If you're not getting a chime, it may be the RAM or logic board. If it was the hard drive, you'd at least make it past the chime. If the mini is DOA you can always remove the hard drive and get the data off, assuming the drive is ok. There are inexpensive, universal USB adapters (Other World has a nice one for about $30, macsales.com).

    #

  • Answer to: Why can't I add files to my external HD? Nov 10 @ 11:52 AM

    The Seagate would have come with Windows formatting *and* partitioning (Master Boot Record). So when I get an external drive that will be used only for Macs, I repartition it (which also reformats it) as either Apple Partition Map (required to boot PPC Macs) or GUID. APM is the best universal choice for Macs, since it can boot both PPC and Intel Macs (though you have to clone Leopard onto it, you can't install directly.) If the drive is only for data, it doesn't matter which you use. Sure you can do a simple reformat for Mac on top of MBR partitions, but then if you try to use the drive for Time Machine I seem to remember it will want to reformat it again. TM will format the drive, including the partition, properly. But then you can't use it with a Windows computer. If you can't copy any files to the new Seagate, perhaps it was formatted NTFS? I believe that's read-only on a Mac.

    #

  • Answer to: eMac not booting Nov 10 @ 11:40 AM

    I think the most likely culprits are a failing hard drive, or the bad capacitors problem that struck the first models of G5 iMac and the G4 eMacs. First the hard drive. If it's the stock drive, it's a prime candidate for failure (most drives last 3-5 years; think of them as consumables, like light bulbs.) Unfortunately the SMART status used by Disk Utility is next to worthless for the most common failure I see, bad blocks (sectors). If you go to versiontracker.com and download SMART Utility, it will let you launch a few times as a demo. SMART Utility reads the SMART attributes of a drive directly and will tell you if your drive is suffering from a failure or imminent hardware failure. Of course, you'll need to boot to an external drive for this. SMART attributes can only be read on an internal drive, so putting your emac in Firewire Target Mode and connecting it to another Mac will not work in this case. Second, the caps. Your symptom is actually more indicative of the hard drive problem, but if you get your computer booted and it freezes, shuts off, or has video artifacts like lines across the screen, then it could be the caps. If you're comfy taking it apart (no mean feat with an eMac, the bitty power cable is a bear to plug back in) you can examine your caps for bulging and leaking.

    #

  • Answer to: How do I open up a Mighty Mouse? Nov 9 @ 5:45 PM

    As a comment to mac605, you can take them apart without destroying them if you're verrrrry careful when breaking the glue joints.

    #

  • Answer to: How do I open up a Mighty Mouse? Nov 9 @ 5:44 PM

    Actually, a Mighty Mouse can get more gunked up than the turn-it-upside-down-and-roll-it technique can fix. I've taken two apart and found the little plastic rollers, that the pea abuts, get fuzz and stuff wound around them just like the good old roller-ball mice used to. Here's a pretty good YouTube video with instructions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jet7488Uo... I reassembled the mice, using little dabs of glue, but didn't bother reinstalling the plastic ring; hopefully that'll make it easier to take them apart the next time.

    #

  • Answer to: Finder keeps relaunching? Nov 4 @ 12:12 PM

    In the past, this has been due to an old version of Stuffit. Try either updating to the latest version (search on "stuffit" at versiontracker.com), or uninstalling. A simple delete probably won't work, you need an uninstaller.

    #

Notes

Discussions

Threads

  • MacBook Core Duo, replaced hinge & optical, boot probs Oct 4 @ 8:08 PM

    HI. I replaced the right hinge, optical drive, and top case on a MB Core Duo. The top case & optical drive were used, hinge came from iFixit. When I got it back together, it kept kernel panicking.

    Thinking the used optical drive was the problem, since it was making too many eject-attempt noises, I removed it, then experimented. I did try another top case with same result. I found that you can test booting without completely reassembling, with the top case just setting on top, though the hard drive cable (even with no HD) needs to be connected for the power light to illuminate. I thought there might be a problem with the cables that route around the optical drive, though I was extremely careful in the original repair to route them tidily and comfortably.

    Now it doesn't kernel panic any more, but most of the time there's no chime, just a brief flash from the display, then nothing (it is providing power to an external USB drive). When it sometimes does boot, it won't stay on--after a few minutes the video goes black, there seems to be no disk activity (using either an internal or external boot drive), but the power light is steady on. I've tried numerous combinations of firmware and SMC resets, and actually got it halfway through a Leopard installation once (from a USB drive), then it shut off again.

    Latest try: fired it up in Target mode, connected to another MB, and used the other MB to successfully install Leopard from a USB drive. This is with the optical drive in the target MB connected but just laying inside, and the top case just laying on top. So in this scenario I'm using the logic board in the good MB to do the heavy lifting and the sick MB is just acting as an external HD. The video is still fine, firewire symbol bouncing happily around.

    It's rebooted to itself now, and installing updates it shut off again; the USB drive was lit, the internal drive was spinning, the power light was off, and when I restarted it I got a KP at boot. Based on this description, can anyone tell me what might be wrong? Could perhaps a damaged video cable (from the original broken hinge) cause a shutoff like that? I read somewhere else that routing those cables can be very tricky. I wonder if the logic board is the problem, since in target mode it worked long enough to install Leopard.

    Thanks for any assistance.

    BTW a white MacBook looks pretty cool with a black top case.

    #

Replies

  • Re: Resetting a password in Tiger w/ a Leopard OS disc Oct 7 @ 7:53 PM

    I meant APM, APF is a typo.

    1. Insert system CD or DVD and boot holding down the C key to boot to the Mac OS X Installer.

    2. The first screen will ask what language. Choose English and click Continue (or whatever it is.)

    3. Next screen...if you have a mismatched Installer you'll get the message that you can't install on this hardware. Ignore that error message--but DON'T dismiss it, or the computer will reboot.

    4. Pull down the Utilities menu (or, in a Leopard installer, I think it's the Apple menu--going from memory here.)

    5. Choose Disk Utility if it's reformatting you're after. Or the password utility if that's your goal.

    From there, you follow the bouncing ball.

    I'm on the road for the next couple days so it'll take a little while to respond if you need clarification.

    #

  • Re: Resetting a password in Tiger w/ a Leopard OS disc Oct 7 @ 7:03 AM

    Greetings, Sunrisetech. You're a little right, and a little wrong.

    After reading your message, I took a system disk from a G4 mini (from my large collection of system disks) and booted a G4 iBook with it. True, I got an alert on the second screen that said I could not install system software on this computer from this disk. However, I successfully pulled down the Utilities menu over the undismissed alert and changed the password on the iBook. I rebooted to the iBook's internal drive to double-check, and it had indeed been changed.

    I welcome the opportunity this discussion has given me to refine my knowledge of bundled system disks --they're not nearly as universal as I had thought. Perhaps my habits were indeed formed back in the OS9 days. Today I carry external drives with Panther, Tiger, and Leopard retail installers cloned onto them, and a full copy of TechTool Pro, so I never need to use system disks any more except maybe to use Pacifier to get a particular bundled app back. (If you partition the drive APF it will boot both PPC and Intel machines.)

    #

  • Re: Resetting a password in Tiger w/ a Leopard OS disc Oct 6 @ 7:55 AM

    Marcucco, I must beg to differ on the password issue; I do this all the time. The way to reset the password is to boot to a system disk and use the Reset Password utility under the Utilities menu (exact location depends on the version of OS, but the disk you're using does not need to be the same version as the one you're changing.) Note that the startup disk CAN be from a different computer model, if it's not a retail version, but when I tried just now, I got kernel panics trying to boot a G4 mini with several different Intel startup disks, so the processor, at least, has to match (i.e. PPC or Intel.)

    As for installing a system from a mismatched disk, you're correct that *some* won't work--I got a You Cannot Install Bundled Software message on several that I checked--but I'm sure I've done this in the past, and the fact that they warn you not to do so implies rather strongly that it IS possible, even if not recommended.

    --Colleen, Mac consultant since 1990

    #

  • Re: Older Mac guides? Oct 5 @ 1:31 PM

    Kyle--I'd love to see some guides for the iSight G5 and Intel iMacs. The earlier G5s are easy. I've found take-aparts for the later ones online, but your guides are superior.

    For the Intel iMacs, you'd also have to include tips on glass-cleaning for that glass-to-glass surface. I've helped an Apple tech take one of those apart. Apple sends special sticky stuff with tool, for getting the glass surfaces clean. We did a better job with my patented MacBook-screen-cleaning technique :)

    #

  • Re: MacBook Core Duo, replaced hinge & optical, boot probs Oct 5 @ 1:26 PM

    I should add that I acquired this MacBook from a client who was disposing of it, and don't know if it was acting this way before. The broken hinge and optical drive seemed to be trouble enough and distracted me from asking about anything else!

    #

  • Re: Resetting a password in Tiger w/ a Leopard OS disc Oct 5 @ 1:23 PM

    Heya guys

    Marcucco, I have to go with Matt on this one. CMac isn't installing a system, but just resetting a password, which just requires you to be able to boot from the installer. Also, the system disks are not protected--you *can* install from some other system's startup disk, but it's not a good idea. However, the Hardware Test won't run on any system other than the specific one it was designed for.

    Other World even used to sell iBook system disks as universal installers; apparently they had all the piecesparts for any model that supported that OS (OS9? Jaguar? Panther? I forget).

    Matt is also correct that the G3 won't be able to boot from that Leopard installer. CMac needs to find a Panther or Tiger disk, probably a CD instead of a DVD.

    Marcucco, after reading your two referenced threads, your problem with the iBooks appears to have been finding the command in DU to reformat. But you *did* manage to boot one of them from the other's installer disk, and from that point (to change the password) you would just look in the menus for a "change password" command.

    #