Any MAC gurus here?

[Eklipze3k]

I'm usually a PC guy, so this has got me a bit stumped.

A few days ago, my OH's MacBook (A1342 running snow leopard) decided it didn't want to boot any more. It would come up with a grey screen with the apple logo and a progress bar. The bar would climb slowly to about 15% and then the machine would switch off.

She didn't get any recovery discs with it, and I tried booting it into recovery mode holding CMD+R, and safe mode holding SHIFT while booting, both to no avail. So i decided to download snow leopard and put it onto a bootable USB. Holding ALT/OPTION while booting gave me the option to boot from USB and identified it as Snow Leopard Install DVD - so all seemed well, but after a few seconds a message comes up:

So I thought I'd plug the HDD into my PC, salvage everything I could from it (using HFS Explorer), then format it and check for bad sectors. All of which went fine, windows said there were no bad sectors so it appears the drive itself is in OK condition. I put it back in the Mac, which now seems to realise that there is no OS installed on it so automatically boots off of the USB, but just keeps coming up with the above message. So I'm basically stuck for what to do next.

Oh, we've also done a clear of the VRAM and PRAM.

 

[ChrisUK]

You're screwed! .

On a Serious note: What Make / Model hard disk is it?

Windows is a bit stupid most of the time detecting physical media errors on hard drives and I've known it say everything's completely fine (The machine functions as normal albeit MEGA SLOW) when the manufacturers diag tools said it was knackered within 10seconds of testing!

So my next step would be to use the manufacturers diag tools (usually bootable) to test the hard disk properly. Use your Windows PC .

Seagate = Seatools
Western Digital = Data life guard

 

[Eklipze3k]

Not at home right now, but I think it's Hitachi

 

[ChrisUK]

http://www.hgst.com/support/downloads

There you go, WinDFT should sort you out

 

[Eklipze3k]

Nice one, will give that a blast when I get home

 

[Eklipze3k]

Running extended test now ...

 

[homeward]

What year is your MacBook?

If it's a 2011 MB Pro, it looks like you're not alone.

 

[Eklipze3k]

Running extended test now ...

Test passed without error.

What year is your MacBook?

If it's a 2011 MB Pro, it looks like you're not alone.

Now that's interesting, I don't know for sure how old it is but that sounds about right. Overheating wouldn't surprise me as the rubberised base has come away from the metal shell due to heat. Will keep an eye out for a potential recall

 

[Eklipze3k]

Actually, I don't think it's a MacBook Pro, doesn't say Pro on it anywhere. But still interesting as I can't imagine there are that many differences (other than the GFX chip).

 

[homeward]

Good luck getting it sorted, anyway... -- these things are sent to try us....

 

[ChrisUK]

Your at the mercy of "mac quirks" now , other than simple hard disks etc. Repairing them is like black magic.

I had a 24" iMac 2009 with an nVidia Graphics card. Decided it would black screen of death on me. I took it apart, it electrocuted me from it's capacitors, I then proceeded to swear at it threatening to drag it behind my car on a rope. Put it back together and it worked .

 

[colin79666]

If you have a USB drive then try plugging it in and installing osx onto that. If it works then it suggest the internal drive is the issue.

 

[Eklipze3k]

If you have a USB drive then try plugging it in and installing osx onto that. If it works then it suggest the internal drive is the issue.

I doubt that'll work because the installation usb doesn't even get as far as asking me where I want to install to. The more I read suggests that the logic board (motherboard to the rest of us) is at fault. Can get a used and working one off eBay for £130...