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Mid 2006 / Model Number: A1181 / black or white case / 1.83 or 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo processor

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First time with MacBook, boots to white screen

Hi all you smart people,

I’m usually a MacBook Pro guy, this is my first time saving e-waste from the landfill, and fixing one up for a needy kid for school.

White Macbook, in good shape. It chimes, turns on, fans on. I’m trying to get it to boot to a usb drive (probably my first mistake). At first I got the “Please insert a bootable device and press any key” error. It has a 320gig Apple Hard Drive in it, and 2 gig of ram. I tried holding the option key and got the boot menu. I selected boot to the El Capitan System USB as my choice. It likes that choice, but just goes to white screen and stays.

Do I need Lion? Do I need to create a DVD? It won’t boot into recovery mode, that’s before it’s time I believe. It won’t boot into single user mode. So, I’m stuck at this point whether I need the original disk, or a formatted EUFI in a different disk format? Totally lost on these. I read a lot articles, but it seems most of them are for booting into Windows 10 2004. That’s not my intention here.

I’d like to end up with an SSD in it, and running a mod version of High Sierra so it can run the newer office for the kid in school. I pretty much tried everything logical, here, and have got the top off and the inside is very clean. Just not sure what my next step should be on this older model. Thanks, in advance.

Answer this question I have this problem too

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Actually it's a 2008, unlike the picture, sorry about that.

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I thought somebody would have experienced this? This is an older model, surely there are people here with experience? Thanks. This is going to a needy kid in the neighborhood with nothing for school.

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A white screen is usually a hard drive issue or a invalid operating system. The drive will most likely need to be reformatted and an new operating system installed. Since you are a Mac User you amy be able to use Target Mode to access the drive from your other (oldest) MacBook Pro using a firewire cable.

Here’s information on using Target Mode:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help...

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Go here it has your fix ````MacBook Model A1181 Troubleshooting

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Thom Hemler will be eternally grateful.
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