General Mac hardware discussions forum: Bad, bad macbook... flashing question mark on screen

Thanks for the suggestion though. It never hurts to cover all your bases with any problem.

Thanks for the link to apple support as well.

cheers

Still nothing more than a white/gray screen. I tried shoving a banana in the open battery slot but that didn't work either.

I turn it on (without any thing attached or disk inserted) and I hear the chime, and the optical drive transport mechanism whirs for a second. I push the power button again and the computer immediately shuts off - no waiting for 5 seconds while holding the power button down.

I get a cursor that appears on the gray white screen that I can move around after start up... but nothing more.

The disk eject button won't work but putting the computer in target disk mode while hooked up to another computer ejects and CD/DVD inserted in the drive.

How easy is it to pop the HD out of this white polycarb late 2007 macbook? I have a universal power cord IDE/SATA cable that I could slap on that sucker to see if the HD is capable of being read as an external drive. I suspect it will be a day long ordeal to get it done, no?

From my limited knowledge of this model mac, I am thinking this is a bad motherboard or a bad processor if the HD proves to still be readable. I will have to do some research and see if this model (MB061LL/B) has any history of defects.

Cheers all... and I will update if I find anything new.

grim

OUCH ! There is something awkward and uncomfortable about that phrase... "HD pulled out through the bottom".


Anyway... I got the HD out of the the bad macbook. It came out through the battery hatch, just as you said it might.

The drive spins up when power is applied but will not mount on my iBook. I'm running tiger and the external HD has Leopard... is there any reason why this fact should prevent the drive from mounting?

I once again tried booting the macbook - sans internal HD - off of my external firewire drive that I keep a cloned copy of my iBook's OS on and it once again refused.

My friend has access to a similar model macbook at work. That macbook is fully operational. Could I pull the HD from that computer and try it in the disabled one to see if it would work, without any danger of damaging the HD that I know works ? Or would placing a good HD in a computer with bad hardware be dangerous to the functional HD?

Thanks for the suggestions so far !

I will take it out tomorrow night and see if I can't hook it up as an external drive.

Should I warm it up first, or is it OK to just hook it up, fresh out of the freezer?

What "may" have been holding that MacBook back is the defective HD.

The system (firmware) just would not let go of the drive, even though it never got a decent response from it.
Now that it is no longer in the equation, this Macbook might take on another life.

Boot from the external, without the internal drive installed.

P

Okay well... you are going to have to bring it to the apple store and they will send it to get it fixed... Its going to be about 800 to 900 to get it fixed and they will have to replace the harddrive and mother board